The Oatmeal Factory embodies 20th century industrial architecture

Fagus Factory, a seminal project of Walter Gropius, built around 1910, presages the modernist movement in architecture and as such, influences later developments of all industrial architecture, during the second industrial revolution of the early 20^th century. Unlike their 19^th century counterparts, which focused primarily on efficiency, these modern monuments of industrialisation also lay emphasis on the humanisation of the work environment. However, an industrial aesthetic of open floor plans, high ceilings, efficient use of natural light, and exposed materials, and services continues across the two centuries. The Ningwu Oatmeal Factory expresses this continuity as well as humanisation—both in its form and aesthetic.

Located in Ningwu county in Shanxi Province in China, the Oatmeal factory sits in a context abound with abject industrial buildings, a dry landscape, and coal mines in its vicinity. The brief asked for an integration of public spaces—a shop, a café and office spaces—with two separate production lines with high volume machinery and staff dormitories. In response, architects Johan Sarvan and Florent Buis of Beijing—based JSPA Design formulated a spatial organisation that not only minimises the interaction between the visitors and staff of the factory, but also segregates the experience through separate circulation paths—experiential for the former and functional for the latter.

The factory is externally accessed through different entrances, also sequestered as per function—for delivery of raw materials, loading of products, staff entry, and visitor entry. Internally, it is segregated across separate floors as per program and degree of accessibility, which interact with each other at a singular moment where the visitor engages visually with the production line, from an elevated corridor along its path, that overlooks the workshop. This non-hierarchical spatial segregation, coupled with distinct entry points facilitates an efficacious workspace.

The ground floor, reserved for the production lines, is enclosed within a system of brick walls to conceal the production unit within an impenetrable volume. This system of walls originates as a bench on the north façade, progressing to a perforated brick compound wall, and culminating as a single storey brick wall that envelops the program within.

Beyond the public landscape design overlooking the bench, a pathway lined with low concrete walls punctured the brick mass to encase the visitor entrance, while smaller, concealed entrances for the workshop spaces emerge from the silhouette of the brick wall. From the visitor's entrance, a staircase via a patio leads to the reception on the first floor. The central production spaces are housed within a concrete shed; whose roof intimately opens the interiors to the north light.

A perforated brick wall separates the workshop spaces from the workers' dormitories, tucked away towards the south behind thick brick walls. Small patios punctuate the mass, allowing the entry of natural light into the interior spaces. A common garden between the two programs relieves the monumental mass of the ground floor and provides a healthy breathing space for the workers.

The first floor, in contrast, is a light weight concrete architecture volume, accommodating the café, shop and offices with a courtyard overlooking the production line on the ground floor. The building is dotted with patios and gardens, which brings in natural light in a building that is otherwise conceived as a solid mass on the ground floor. A series of concrete colonnades form a skin on the four facades of the first floor, blurring the boundary between the inside and outside.

Explaining the concept for the design of the first floor, the architects share, "The concrete volume on the other hand, creates an enclosure but doesn’t define a limit between inside and outside. Glass separations are indeed conceived independently from the concrete façade. The result is a certain complexity in the perception of the building: it has to be experienced to be understood. The rhythm of the concrete colonnade freed from any window or glass joinery allowed this diaphanous boundary while creating a calm and monumental façade for the factory."

The program is intrinsically extended to include landscape elements that are sprawled across the patios and gardens, and include water pools at different levels, which receive water from an integrated rainwater collection system. The patios thus become the only source of natural light in this inwards facing building. 

The Oatmeal Factory embodies 20^th century industrial architecture, both in design intent as well as its expression. A material palette of grey brick, concrete and glass, not only emulates its predecessor aesthetically but also structurally and spatially. Large open spans, exposed structural elements, and an integration of natural light for working, living, and experiential spaces, boasts of a productive workspace within.