Awaiting the Next
Team
Name: Benjamin Smithers
Nationality: United Kingdom
Institution / Company: None
Name: Luz Wallace
Nationality: Puerto Rico
Institution / Company: None
– FINALIST of REVIVING MINES: SHANDONG PARK Competition
This project brings people and tourism to nearby Zibo, creating opportunities for experiencing defunct mining areas nearby, by converting these remnants into wonders for exploration and relaxation.
This project magnifies the spectacle of the existing landscape remaining from earlier mining operations. Water pumped from a nearby reservoir runs over salt rock and minerals, and floods pools created by small levees nestling into the landscape and underground. Slowly, evaporation over time creates a spectacle of other-worldly colours; the water salinating as it finds its way down the rough hillside.
Visitors travel to the site to experience its mineral baths, or explore the caves that remain from its mining past. While relaxing in hot bathing pools, they look out over a bewildering landscape of vivid colour, finding themselves strangely out of place and in awe. More adventurous visitors, who venture over the precipice deep into the crater, find themselves in a subterranean relic of the old mines. A meandering path leads them through the caves, always suggesting something mysterious around each the corner. More experienced cavers can explore deeper into the crater and shafts within, journeying into depths unknown.
