NOTHINGNESS - REVITALISATION OF AN ABANDONED QUARRY IN CHENNAI

The industrial revolution provided us with the engineering and power necessary to make profound economic and social change. However, with this unprecedented growth and new found prosperity, an abuse of natural resources and our environment initiated a trajectory of unforeseeable consequences. Today, we are leaving our historically wasteful and turbulent manufacturing economy in favour of a seemingly more stable and mainstream digitally driven era. With this, we are seeing the massive areas of disrupted land that once stood to represent the height of innovation and success appearing as abandoned wastelands all over the world. With the quest to redevelop these areas lies the opportunity to re-imagine the definition of public space and green infrastructure. This thesis takes a critical eye to previous and current design strategies of industrial landscapes and identifies new typologies relevant within this construct. Using a Gravel quarry with abandoned area as its site, this thesis proposes a master plan to reclaim, restore, and reuse the quarry as an alluring recreational green space for the surrounding community. In seeking a redefinition of the urban park, this thesis argues that a new type of cultural parkland is needed that envelope structures, that conversed and ground that responds to 21st century living.

The site by itself is an embodiment of a series of narrative, which is probably stimulated by the mankind. The project seeks to nurture, revive and synthesis the unconditionally created landmass into a space that envisions the way architecture sublimes the quality of the unbuilt space. The ‘Void’ is celebrated, by the built. Water is reflecting the harshness of the surface, a lush landscape is fostered, the architecture of the arts discreet within the void and nature….through which man moves and discovers layer by layer, a place that is sublime and glorious in its ‘Nothingness’. The project celebrates the beauty of the laid down mass.

This proposal uses a series of architectural interventions to respond to sites visual character and fill the recreational needs of the community. How can a forward looking architecture acknowledge a surrounding context defined by its past? This thesis aims to capture the knowledge of previous violent enterprise, physical industrial remnants, topographic qualities of a Quarried landscape, and the character of the surrounding community in order to fuse architecture with its industrial surroundings. Through this entwined relationship of architecture and its surrounding landscape the project is able to provide unique amenities that embrace the quarry’s industrial heritage. The proposal sees what has been abandoned not as waste, but as an opportunity to redefine the cultural park in order to create dynamic and engaging spaces. “THE MODERN PARK IS NO LONGER SEEN AS A QUIET RURAL GREEN, BUT AS A SPARKLING AND OVERCHARGED URBAN CROSSROADS” – ADRIAANGEUZE