Adding To, Subtracting From

16

BRENNA FRANSEN

“We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we can see land as a community to which we belong we may begin to use it with love and respect.” - Aldo Leopold

The land exists as a constant subtraction and addition, be it by human or natural forces, with a developmental focus on the additive proportion. By the action of adding material, a subtraction occurs from another point in space. Therefore, all materials exist as an energy in which the form and function is transformed through these patterns of adding to and subtracting from. Once this transformation could be traced from the hands of humanity, the Anthropocene began. The dominant additive nature of the post industrial world masks the negative impacts on the landscapes of which our world is built from.

“The dominant additive nature of the post industrial world masks the negative impacts on the landscapes of which our world is built from.”

Extraction is one of the most recognizable physical transformations by humans, creating industrial pits which are too often discarded and forgotten after their exploitation. These voids in the earth become reverse images of the exact cityscapes they are building. Lucy Lippard, activist and author of Undermining argues that “Mines and quarries are metaphorically cities turned upside down.”

Most quarries aren’t located in densely populated cities but are often found in small cities and amongst marginalized communities suffering from the climate crisis disproportionately. Once these sites are depleted from their profitable resources, these weathered pits often become abandoned and cease to bring growth and development to that area. Since harvested materials are relocated from their origin, quarries are depleted from continuous economic stability and quite often go bankrupt.

Once abandoned, quarries often fill with water and can become sites for landfills. This unproductive means of continuing weathering post extraction is detrimental to the cities which once worked from these sites. Even though federal order was put into place to maintain that these sites remain safe and non toxic, due to The Surface

Work by Brenna Fransen

Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, many abandoned pits closed long before permits and bonds were required. These particular quarries remain in the hands of private owners who often went bankrupt, leaving most sites untouched.

While a modern sensibility towards environmental reuse and restoration for abandoned quarries has grown recently, it should be noted that quarries have been reused, mainly for utilitarian purposes, since the Roman era. Catacombs were one of the most common historical reuses of quarries,

even the word “catacomb” derives from the meaning “at the cavity” referencing funeral complexes located inside ancient stone quarries. The catacombs became a common place for burial, religious celebration, and escape from persecution and stand out as the most significant historical use of extracted spaces.

Prior to the catacombs, the ancient Greek introduced the Latomie which were originally ancient stone quarries used for building roads and temples. Some of these extractions were later used for the imprisonment of slaves 17

18 and criminals, and eventually became dwellings for the humble class. Fast forward to the 1900’s, extracted quarries were still being used for exploitative practices. During World War I, pits were being converted to concentration camps such as the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria that was also in operation during World War II. So when did the shift for quarry reuse move from utilitarian and exploitative practices to sustainable care practices?

Historically, old quarries were only allocated for reuse based on the urgency and need for the land. Even when quarry reuse shifted towards an aesthetic recreation during the renaissance age in Florence, the full potential of quarry reuse as a form of care for the environment was not fully recognized. Progressive land use has received attention recently, now looking towards nearly half a million abandoned quarries in the US alone that should be analyzed for future architectural and environmental value. Progressive land use advocates promote recycling, reclamation and remediation. Recently projects have been completed utilizing sustainable redevelopment as a solution such as using these sites for research, education, aquaculture, recreational activities, and housing. By utilizing Gray Infrastructure Typologies such as quarries and mines, green strategies are more easily implemented and should encourage the utilization of natural capital that is readily available for environmental solutions.

From Lippards observations, pits and shafts reflect culture, alter irreplaceable ecosystems, and generate new structures; undermining what we are doing to our continent when greed and inequity triumph. The care required to respond to such actions may seem irreconcilable. Abandoned quarries now present new solutions to climate change such as water storage for fire emergencies, flooding buffers, and irrigation systems and industrial sites abandoned throughout the US are in need of imaginative reuses and require attention to reverse the anthropogenic and discriminatory land use policies in which these pits emerged.

Citations: Corner, James, and David Leatherbarrow. Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Theory (171-183: Leveling the Land). Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.

Leatherbarrow, David.; Mohsen Mostafavi. On Weathering: the Life of Buildings in Time. MIT Press, 2001.

Lippard, Lucy R. Undermining: a Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West. The New Press, 2014.

Talento, K.; Amado, M.; Kullberg, J.C. Quarries: From Abandoned to Renewed Places. Land 2020

Zraick, Karen. “Old Mines Are Full of Dangers (and Possibilities).” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Dec. 2018.

19