Edged on the strange and emerged - nature’s indigenousness: an eco-regenerative research centre, Barberton

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the architectural design of an Eco-Regenerative Research Centre in Barberton. Two objectives guide the research. The primary aim of the dissertation project is to accommodate the programmatic needs of the Research Centre. The Research Centre investigates the potential of employing hyperaccumulative plants for landscape rehabilitation after mining. Toxins in the soil are naturally broken down by hyperaccumulative plants, restoring the soil and allowing for landscape regeneration. This process further allows for a more feasible rehabilitation solution through processing these hyperaccumulative plants to extract the metals. This process is known as phytomining. Apart from functioning as a Research Centre, the Centre also welcomes visiting academics and representatives from the mining industry to observe and learn about the negative impact of mining and the regenerative processes being studied. To this educational purpose, the second aim of the dissertation project is linked: to create a facility that poetically aids in nurturing the experience of being indigenous to nature – not separate from nature. The first aim links to the client’s needs, whereas the second aim attempts to link to the client’s inherent desire: creating a consciousness of our human indigenousness to nature – put differently: our human embeddedness in the fruits and harm of one natural system. In order to highlight this embeddedness, the design attempts to create awareness of both the harm caused by our anthropocentric condition and the opposite nature-centered condition, where humans are but a participant in the network of nature. Ecognosis is the emerged understanding of the strange and dark motions of our natural world, including our devastation of it (counting the act of mining), which both frightens and enlightens us about our natural kinship with the environment.