We propose an alternative mode of rehabilitation for a 130-year-old sandstone quarry in south-eastern Australia, 200kms from Melbourne.
By proposing an alternate mode of rehabilitation we seek to:
1. Examine expectations around the rehabilitation of industrially damaged landscapes.
2. Question economic conventions of valuing land as a commodity to be used until exhausted.
3. Challenge perceptions of land being damaged until either, returned ‘back’ to native bushland, capped or filled.
Our objective for this project is to position rehabilitation, not as an outcome defined by specific objectives, but as an open-ended and responsive state in which people and landscape coexist.
This alternate mode of rehabilitation doesn’t start or stop, doesn’t take a specific amount of time and doesn’t conclude once a specific set of requirements is met.
We seek to do this through creative and collaborative projects with a range of artists, designers, builders and architects; with educational institutions, government bodies and local organisations.
We question conventional value systems and definitions of production, and instead foreground, education and experimentation; observation and site-responsiveness; slowness and caretaking.
We have developed a phased approach to site and our rehabilitation obligations which continues to be adapted and updated as we learn from the site over the coming years.
Governing Principles:
— Water is the start of all things
— Governance of dynamic systems
— Incremental Change
— Alternate models of rehabilitation
— Alternate modes of education
