100 Years of Summer
A ski area brownfield as a testing ground to explore ways of how humans and nonhumans can thrive in a warming alpine landscape, together.
V. Zech (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
G. Coumans (TU Delft - Public Building and Housing Design)
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Abstract
100 Years of Summer: A ski area brownfield as a testing ground to explore ways of how humans and nonhumans can thrive in a warming alpine landscape, together.
This project started with a romantic fascination for the mountain landscape in my home country, and with wondering what would happen to all the infrastructure in ski areas once there isn’t enough snow anymore to run them profitably.
I soon discovered, however, that there are some much more fundamental questions to tackle first - mainly concerning how we position ourselves as humans in this world: Are we as autonomous from other beings as we like to think? How does our experience of a (brownfield) landscape differ from that of a bird, goat, or flower? What is our role - both our responsibility and agency - in alpine ecosystems? What is the role, big or small, of each other thing? What does it take for the landscapes to be resilient and full of life despite the pressure applied by climate change?
The final exhibition does not answer all these questions. It creates a spatial framework for experimenting with possible answers and tries to expand the (architectural) narrative: from a solely human experience of the landscape, architecture, and activities, to one that acknowledges the role and experience of nonhuman beings like animals, plants, soil, rain, materials,...