11.28.2006

Purple Gold: Architecture as an Act of Remediation

Abstract:

The extent to which construction changes the landscape is seldom considered. Although the word construction implies a positive formation, its beginnings are marked by destruction: land is cleared and reconfigured. Many of our values emerge in this process; landscapes become real estate and architecture is reduced to style, with the relationship between the two wholly discreet. The all too familiar result is rarely satisfying. To remedy this, building should be a synergistic action—one that offers new potentials where landscape, architecture and place are interwoven. This relationship is magnified on the fringes between the undeveloped and the developed, the virgin and the spoiled. In America, these places are diametrically claimed as resources, simultaneously qualifying as existential national treasures and mining rights valued at five dollars an acre. It is in these distinctly American landscapes, economically defined by tourism and mining, that new typologies for building within a landscape can be explored. The result is a new way of experiencing our [un]natural landscape

Statement of Purpose:

To investigate a new relationship between landscape and architecture, the act of tourism and mining are synthetically intertwined with land remediation. A new form of ecotourism is proposed where the site is no longer a pristine wilderness, but the tailings of a gold mine. Instead of conceiving of sustainability simply as improved mechanical systems, architecture actively participates in the process of remediation. For example, phytomining is combined with phytoremediation, using plants to simultaneously rid the soil of both contaminates and gold, the latter being used to pay for the process. Pioneered in 1998 by the New Zealand Earth Scientist Christopher Anderson and confirmed in experiments, the soil of mining can be treated with naturally occurring chemicals to allow the plants, whose leaves turn purple from the process (gold is purple in its nano particulate form), to absorb the metals. The plants rid the soil of both contaminates, such as mercury, and gold, yielding up to 14 ounces (approximately $8,400) per acre. Participation is ushered into the process through tourism, where visitors can involve themselves in the history of the land—both in learning the past abuses and actively bettering its future.
The American West is ripe with land spoiled by the dream of gold. The theatrical waterfalls and geysers that define so many of America’s national parks are next to some of the largest mining operations. The infamous search for gold and other minerals has left a devastating ecological legacy in the American West, from mercury spills to the massacre of native people. What is mostly a distant memory in states such as California is still a nascent condition in pristine environments, such as the Amazon in Brazil. In my research, I will seek to understand the cyclic nature of these places, examining recent mining explorations, their latent legacy on the environment, and how these places can be remediated through a built intervention.

Intellectual Context:

Throughout history, architecture has primarily been about object, iconography and meaning. Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, as shown in his Four Books on Architecture, is a pattern to be superimposed on any landscape. Its system of organization is entirely internalized and its geometry is pure and self-determined. A pedestal-like base elevates the piano nobile, separating building from ground. Modern tradition follows suit. Le Corbusier, evidenced in his five points, sought to reduce architecture to a kit of parts. The paradigmatic Villa Savoye’s pilotis suspend the building above the ground, creating a relationship between object and landscape similar to camera and subject: landscape is reduced to view. As such, architecture does not engage the landscape, but rather represents mans rise above it.

This reflects a larger attitude towards the land that has come to define architecture in America. Architecture is reduced to style and landscape becomes real estate. The disconnect manifests itself in both manicured lawns and brownfields. There are several architectural practices that are seeking to more intimately tie building to landscape, such as Reiser + Umemoto. The Alishan Tourist Resort seeks to intimately tie what is built into the landscape.

Problem Statement:

How can architecture be structured systemically so that it works synergistically with the landscape to better the condition of place?

Project Definition:

The project exists on land that, although it was once pristine, has been exploited by man. The value of the landscape has not been its holistic sense of place, but rather the discreet minerals found deep beneath it. The process of extraction has resulted in spoiled land—land where the act of digging, an essential element in architecture, has toxic consequences. The site represents the unsustainable attitude of manifest destiny that has characterized the American West: it is the tailings of a gold mine.
The project seeks to define new attitudes towards the land through an architectural proposal. Beginning with land remediation, strategies to reintroduce people into the landscapes they ruined are the ultimate goal. The program is multifaceted: it will remind of past transgressions (museum?), actively engage remediation (exploratorium?), and present new potentials (tourism?).

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