Story Mine
Story Mine criticizes the ecological trauma inflicted by the extractivist practices of open-pit mining under late capitalism in the Aegean region, more specifically in a small city named Urla, where the mining industry has been aggressively advancing towards disposing of the land without any consideration for the resulting trauma.
Starting from the possible future nightmare scenarios in which extractivism mines Urla dry, the project sets a warning of how this city would become damaged and uninhabitable if no precautions were taken. Exposing the systemic ecological violence inflicted on İzmir, a nearby metropolitan area, by illustrating how the rapid expansion of limestone quarries- many carved overnight into İzmir’s forests over the last 30 years – casts a shadow on Urla. Acting as both a critique and a protective system, the project seeks to counter the looming threat of destruction in these areas whose ecosystems have taken years to develop.
Here, story mine speculates itself in a post-human world where such scarred areas could be retained through the simple act of caretaking. Composed of different phases and through a period of 400 years, architecture becomes the main mediator of an uncanny sense of coexistence between humans and robots. As time goes on, spaces emerge, grafted out of the existing mining infrastructure and steel additions. The time in which you are viewing the building is directly associated with the architecture of it. In 20 days or years, some/other parts might be attached/corroded/changed. Here, once extraction machines become a part of the reconstruction, they transform into the “architecture” itself.
Situated in the negative alcoves formed by the extraction of the past, the architecture always stays just a touch away from vertical limestone formations. Here, the rock itself becomes the “walls” of the salt factory where robots and humans- whatever is left of us, come together across multiple timescales of inhabitation to rehabilitate the limestone mine, using the natural byproduct- salt, that formed in the past, when the stone was repeatedly blasted.
The rehabilitation process starts itself as rainwater fills the bottom of the open pit mine, activating the “salt needles”. The existing infrastructure of the mine allows these needles to be injected into the empty grooves of the limestone. Here by dissolving, salt in the limestone is retained and processed minimally while the rainwater-filled open-pit mine serves as a water tank for the system. Here salt, which is essential for human life, plays an equally important role for the robots roaming around the salt factory: as they are powered by sodium- just like our kind.
In the organization, boundaries are blurry. Living quarters of humans and robots are integrated. Next to a sleeping pod, a sodium charging station emerges. The corridors robots take viewing the rocks juxtapose with those of humans overlooking the vast blue bio pond where they can jump in through a crane head. Women and men enter the communal showers through different corridors but end up in the same space. Societal norms do not matter anymore, spaces help dissolve them. It has been 100 years since that “extraction”.
In its final phase, the project embraces decay as a form of renewal. Overburden from the mine mixed with orange tree seeds is sifted on top of everything with a repurposed crane. Over time, the architecture gradually erodes, and surfaces become covered with mixed seeds, allowing nature to reclaim the land. Ultimately, by rewriting the mine’s story, the project serves as a monument to the failures of capitalism and the human destruction inflicted on our planet. In this sense, story mine is a long-term concept used for slowly turning an environmental scar into a productive area for the good of our planet.
