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Geological Ghosts and Industrial Monsters

Part 2 Project 2022
Jay Antony Hallsworth
Newcastle University | UK
All it takes is one look at the magnesian limestone fossils at the core of Sunderland’s geological fingerprint to imagine a time before humans, a time before our industrial monsters plagued the landscapes, when these geological ghosts swam the seas, unaware of their part to play in fuelling our voracious capitalist consumption of mother earth.

‘Geological ghosts and Industrial Monsters’ is an allegory of the twin city of Sunderland, a post-industrial cityscape reflecting an invisible geological underworld. Machines leech into ancient ghosts, exhuming them and causing them to wreak havoc on the planet. To bring harmony back to the earth we must lay them back to rest in the strata.

Understanding that Sunderland is a prospective site for a geological disposal facility (GDF) of nuclear waste forces the mind to an imagined future. Designing a nuclear waste repository represents humanities greatest attempt at communicating through time, designing for 10,000 years. To protect our unreachable descendants, we must reinterpret the role of the architect and architectures intrinsic co-existence with narrative, bringing to life mythologies that outlive us, and through these many retellings, keep these exhumed monsters, within the safe confines of the underworld, like Ouranos in Tartarus.


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2022
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