Recently, I had the chance to photograph the former power station on Manresa Island in Norwalk, Connecticut. Built in 1960, the coal- and oil-fired plant was a place of work for more than 50 years until it was decommissioned in 2013. Rather than tearing it down, its owners cleaned up the infrastructure as far as possible and kept the buildings intact for future use.
Walking through the halls and offices, I could feel the life that once filled them. The rooms are mostly empty now, yet traces of people are everywhere. Generations of workers spent a large part of their lives here. You can almost hear the conversations and picture the daily routines, and you feel the void they left behind. That is what draws me to industrial spaces like this. Most architecture is made for the people who use it, and even when they are gone, the buildings still carry their story.
The site is now entering a new chapter. After changing hands several times, it was bought in 2024 by the nonprofit Manresa Island Corporation, which plans to turn it into Manresa Wilds, a public park and community hub that will also restore forests and coastal habitats. In February, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and SCAPE unveiled their final design for the $410 million project, which reuses the turbine hall and boiler building and opens nearly two miles of shoreline to the public.
