Reclaiming Altered Landscapes: The Bingham Canyon Mine Memorial

Abstract

Open-Pit mining in America has created landscape alterations that are vast and permanent. These landscapes have created and erased entire communities in order to extract ore for human use. Despite their destructive character, working open-pit mines have also become tourist attractions to the public. When abandoned, mines often take on qualities of repulsion and attraction as nature reclaims such sites. These ruined landscapes have been open to interpretation, often misread as "natural". This thesis explores the reclamation of the lost memories of these altered landscapes through a narrative architecture, while projecting it to its future state.