Repurposing Mining Sites

ByRyan Kinports

Adaptive reuse is my primary interest and what I plan to do with my career. The forgotten and discarded structures that litter our built environment often idle until the only reasonable solution is to tear them down. There are some of man's creations that aren't se easy to erase though, in this case the leftovers of an immense mining industry. Rather than leveling untouched terrain to build more subdivisions we could use these sites, often miles wide encompassing thousands of acres, as platforms to build integrated urban communities. My project uses an open pit mine to demonstrate how this process can unfold. Below is the conceptual postcard we created to show our concept.