In the Garden of the Apocalypse: Narrating Myth and Reality in the Hanford Landscape

Abstract

This thesis explores the line between myth and reality in the contemporary landscape of the Hanford nuclear reservation. As landscape of well-preserved sagebrush desert, Hanford is also the birthplace of atomic weapons and the most dangerously polluted place in America. Contemporary approaches to the site have generally been singular and oppositional in their reading of this conflicted landscape. This thesis proposes a new approach to the landscape that will better interpret the site for what it is, a garden, a monument and a wasteland. Additionally, the design tackles issues explores the architectural implications of the burial of vitrified nuclear waste, which will be produced at Hanford over the next fifty years. The thesis proposes that an experiential and bodily interaction with the landscape can lead to a more subtle and more personal understanding of the site's multiple meanings. Through a series of architectural interventions, this project will provide a narrative means of confronting our nuclear legacy and the waste it has created while exposing the human and natural history of the Hanford landscape.