ARCH-4980.1 | Ted Ngai, Lecturer

INTO THE WASTELAND
Tailings Reclamation through Biomineralization

ANGELA McCRORY

Through an examination of the environmental impact of mining operations both historical and contemporary, an alternative building process is proposed that considers abundant mineral industry wastes as a material resource. This proposal intends to reconcile a people and an ecology to an existing mine site. That site is the Mina Escondida in northern Chile, the ecology that of the Atacama Desert. While waste cleanup or removal is not fully within the scope of the proposed intervention, both the visibility and accessibility of a previously “hidden” site is considered, as well as the change in perception about industrial by-products from inevitable waste stream to potential resource owned by and available to a people.

The architectural proposal seeks to take advantage of the extreme and unnatural conditions at the mine site. The proposed building site is at the mine tailings pond, an enormous artificial lake, which acts as the dump area for all mine wastes. Here a material transformation will be made possible through the re-consideration of the material-chemical potential of the substances dissolved and suspended in this lake. Through the application of new technologies for harnessing and directing the biomineralization processes, the tailings pond will be exploited for the materials it contains and also as an aqueous construction site where mineral-specific proteins can catalyze the deposition of minerals and free heavy metals out of solution and onto a fibrous scaffold. The structure will grow as long as the tailings pond is in use, finally emerging from solution when mining activity at the Mina Escondida ceases.

In this way, a literal “wasteland” becomes occupiable, reclaimed as an indication that it is no longer permissible for humans to lay land to waste. The construction will provide a level of exposure to the widespread yet largely mysterious methods of mineral extraction. The geological scale of mining operations, so difficult to comprehend through a photograph and so infrequently encountered in person, will be given a new measure through direct encounter and human habitation.