The geology of landscapes
Times, rhythms, palimpsests of the Rhenish crater
L. Cipriani (TU Delft - Landscape Architecture)
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Abstract
The Hambach mine is one of Europe’s largest and deepest open-cast coal mines. Humans have transformed the landscape to the point of giving life to a new geological era. The mine is the symbol of humanity’s power over territorial, environmental, and climatic transformations at impressive levels of scale and scope. This contribution sums up five different times of the Hambach mine landscape,
with its rhythms and palimpsests: deep geological time, historical time, the rapid anthropogenic time of excavation, the present time of transition towards new forms of energy, and finally, future time with the conversion of the crater into a lake. Time is the driving force of this place in light of the geological, anthropic, and climatic changes. The work presents a reflection on the IDEA League summer workshop held in 2022 by TU Delft in collaboration with Aachen University and Politecnico di Milano.