LW

SARDINIA 2015​

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The 5th edition of the workshop took place at the abandoned site of the Argentiera, an old mining complex along the northwest coast of Sardinia. The site is located within of the Historical and Environmental Geomining Park of Sardinia, a part of the Global Network of Geoparks of UNESCO, which intends to preserve these areas because of the particularly significant geological heritage, “scientific rarity, aesthetic and educational value” of the sites and artefacts.

Thanks to the conservation of the ancient historical silver extraction structures found on site, the area has been well preserved through time. Along with its exceptional geographic character, the mining settlement of Argentiera is like a museum of natural history. The site is unique and summarizes the entire anthropological history of Sardinia, an island that since ancient times has been a basin of extraction of metals and coal for the whole Mediterranean area.

“Beginning with critical site-analysis, LandWorks participants uncover the site’s ‘working traces,’ or the layered physical marks made by human hands on the land over time. Participants excavate and evidence the multi-layered indexes of that past by revealing inconspicuous and otherwise hidden layers that are inextricably integrated into the landscape. These factors become the creative drivers that propel team-based site-specific installations that are presented to community members, local politicians, and environmental advocates. While a purist historic-preservation approach would, at times, design a solution nostalgically based on a frozen moment of time, the intention at the core of each LandWorks workshop is to re-join the conflicting forces of old and new at work on a fallow and latent landscape. The process amplifies the dialectic between both culture and environment as dynamic systems and frameworks for the continuous process of regeneration.”

LandWorks-Sardinia: Post-Industrial Experiential Design, Simon Bussiere and Kera Lovell