10. Conclusion
The concept of spatiality converges in the Mills not only in its formal characteristics with three factories converted into a united complex in a total of 260,000sqf, but also, and perhaps most importantly, in the way these qualities are shaped together with its history.
As accurately defined by Harvey, spatiality is also a social construct, a product of the political economic system. Likewise, as proposed by Sheppard, we cannot dissociate the concept of spatiality from the geographical, the environmental, the social, or even from time. All these dimensions are embedded in the Mills.
To be precise, given the compound nature of the Mills as a site of intersection between textile heritage, technology, entrepreneurship, artistic and cultural practices, it is possible to re-reconsider spatiality at three levels: 1) as hybrid workplaces with eco-friendly design, open layout, high-rise glass offices, and other amenities aiming at different working atmospheres; 2) as space-making and process based expansion, where modes of production overlap, allying handcraft with technology, knowledge with practice; and 3) as cultural and socioeconomic spatial organisations aiming at achieving an equilibrium between cultural significance and economic value.
The emergence of compound spaces similar to the Mills requires a continuing analysis of spatiality and scale beyond geographical boundaries and temporal frames. The Mills-CHAT can play a key part in on-going research project about the recent phenomenon of former factories that have been converted into new sites of artistic, textile and knowledge production in Europe and East Asia. The re-signification of the textile factories’ pasts intersected by cultural, socioeconomic, and political transformations will contribute to reinstate textile heritage as a construction of shared and contrasting features between different transnational contexts.
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