The Fish Renaissance

Oil-Era Warehouse Still Privatizing The Harbourfront

Aberdeen is known as the Oil Capital of Europe. For half a century, oil rigs and pipelines define both the city’s economy and identity. The harbourfront became dominated by transit sheds, fenced warehouses, and oil infrastructure. Today, the harbour is still filled with these shadows. Warehouses remain fenced. Public access is cut off. The sea is hidden behind walls.

A Forgotten Liveliness

 And yet, if we go back further, before oil, Aberdeen was alive. Fishing boats landed daily, auctions echoed in the sheds, and markets flourished. The harbour was not closed. nor silent, but full of the rhythms of fish culture.

Just as oil once positioned Aberdeen on the world stage in the 20th century, fish can reposition the city in the 21st century. This is not nostalgia, it is about building cultural resilience, civic identity, and pride through fish culture.

Don't Scrap The Old

I analysed these oversized transit sheds built for industrial logistics rather than civic purpose. I mapped their components: portal frames, columns, haunches, I-beams, thousand of meters of purlins and etc. These sheds can contain a rich inventory of reusable steel members once broken down.

The aim is to dismantle this overwhelming scale and translate it into smaller, varied, human-centric spaces. Instead of one massive industrial box, the same parts can be reconfigured into halls, courtyards, and bridges, more attuned to civic life.

The Site Plan As The Fish Choreography

The overall plan features, from left to right, the Docking Hall, the Food and Auction Hall, the Market Hall, the Logistic Hall, the Mussel Garden and Bio Lab.

Top: The Choreographed Bridge — the elevated public path.

Below: The Fish Choreography  — the operational fish flow.

Together, they form a dual reading: workers below, visitors above; processes being performed, and processes being inspected.
 

What if enjoying Scottish delicacies could help save the city from flooding?

The Reuse Cookbook

These architectural details are documented in the Reuse Cookbook, which records strategies and design ideas for material reuse across different architectural scales.

Upcycling The Wooden Pallet

Across Aberdeen, cheap wooden pallets appear everywhere — stacked behind shops, reused as benches.  Here, the cheap wooden pallets are reimagined as movable chairs and tables, stepped seating for informal gatherings, frames for exhibitions and planters.

This low-cost, adaptable furniture becomes the first expression of reuse and documented into the cookbook at different scales

Detailed Section of Facade System

Clear glass is used to provide visual connections between inspectors, operational spaces, and views toward the harbour, while allowing generous daylight into the interior. 

Above, the façade extruded with channel glass on the second floor, accommodating the structural cross-bracing within its depth. The translucent surface offers both thermal insulation and a soft diffusion of light, revealing subtle silhouettes of the working labour behind it.