IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section A
Abstract
Mining served as a source of inspiration for the emergence of site-specific land art, whose advocates used bulldozers, front-end loaders, backhoes, and other heavy equipment to create artworks inseparable from their natural settings. Towards the end of his short life, Robert Smithson, an artist and founding member of the land art movement, focused some of his creative output on the reclamation of former mining sites as well as other blighted landscapes. In his theoretical and critical writings, Smithson argued against efforts to restore these areas to their previously undisturbed conditions. While mine remediation land art projects built since Smithson’s early death in 1973 declined to embrace the comprehensive restoration of industrialized sites to their old pre-mining condition, they also removed remaining evidence of their recent extractive pasts. This paper explores land-form projects that are artistically strong and or successful public spaces built in old mining sites, arguing that the establishment of a dialectic between natural and industrial sites can further enrich them.
Rene Davids, a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design, was educated at the Universidad de Chile and the Royal College of Art in London. Professor Davids co-edited the AsBuilt series (2007-2012) from Princeton Architectural Press and edited Shaping Terrain: City Building in Latin America (2016), published by the University Press of Florida, to which he substantially contributed
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