Brewing a New Community: Redefining local industrial manufacturing within a city

The effects of globalization echo in former factory cities, in their depleted industrial landscapes and their abandoned buildings, creating a disconnect between people, their identities, their communities, and their cities. In recent years, there has been a return of small-scale manufacturing to cities with maker movements and the emerging desire for locally made products led by farmers’ markets and artisans. The purpose of this thesis is to consider how the craft brewery industry is serving as a catalyst for urban change by creating new opportunities to bring people together in post-industrial neighbourhoods. By examining contemporary social needs of the consumer and questioning how a collective hybrid industrial space can create a dialogue between the community and small-scale manufacturers, craft breweries today are trying to find a balance between production and social programmatic designs. They are redefining the industrial typology as something more than a factory, but a space of social and cultural production. Through the framework of neolocalism, a new sense of belonging and collaboration can be established through the shared collective identity of place, history and space. This idea is explored through the design of a brewery in the former Dominion Textiles Woolens & Worsted Mill in Hespeler, Ontario. The purpose of the design is to explore how experiential consumption within an industrial artifact promotes the craft of local manufacturing, increases awareness of the surrounding agricultural economies, and creates a new form of tourism for the region.