The Guise of Regeneration: How Adaptive Reuse of Textile Mills in Post-Industrial England Perpetuates Cycles of Cultural Erasure and Economic Inequality Part 2 Dissertation 2026 Rosa Wilde Northumbria University Newcastle upon Tyne | UK Critical theorists have long highlighted the importance of architecture as a political tool, and demonstrated the permeation of neoliberal values throughout the profession and the built environment. This study specifically investigates textile mills, monumental relics of the industrial age, developing the thesis that their reuse must challenge the neoliberal politics that have contributed to longstanding social and economic inequalities in northern post-industrial regions. The research focuses on Salts Mill, Saltaire, as a case study and establishes a mixed critical method which combines archival counter narrative research and site investigation through site montage. The critical instrument of the site montage is developed in order to respond to the issue of excess or veiled information within the raw site photographs, combining artistic references to more thoroughly interrogate the architectural condition. Analysis of the counter-narrative matrix supports the conclusion of the original model industrial village at Saltaire as a key illustration of a disciplinary society. The site montage instrument points to the interpretation of Salts Mill as a heterotopia, a concept theorised by Michel Foucault, as well as the continuities between the compliant worker of Salts Mill in its time as a productive enterprise, and the compliant minds of the citizen consumer at Salts Mill in the contemporary condition. The study therefore contributes to architectural critical theory by exposing contradictions embedded within the regeneration of textile mills. Tutor(s) Cameron McEwan