Mythigate the Mine: An adjusted response to a degenerative site.

Abstract

In New Zealand, the exploitation of natural capital for industrial production leaves a growing number of dead sites that harm local ecosystems, heavily affecting their environment and communities. Communities, that have historically relied on the economic and social support that the operation of these sites once provided. Current approaches to the reintegration of dead sites fail to accurately identify the breadth of potential solutions and settle for the minimum mitigation of environmental damage, transforming into stagnant and unproductive sites. This thesis argues that regenerative design and natural capitalism thinking could follow surrealistic and visionary paths to reintegrate dead sites back into the changed social, cultural, and economic systems of their communities. Such an approach envisions a comprehensive social, cultural, and environmental reconciliation strategy that transforms the criticalities of damaged leftover industrial sites into key elements of an ecological reconquest of relationality. This strategy combines two distinct streams of investigation, the first of which uses a speculative lens to revise and re-envision current sustainable and ‘pseudo-sustainable’ techniques, concepts, and technologies of regeneration. The second stream uses a system-dynamics approach to ideate possible design strategies that lead to a sustainable reintegration of the dead sites. Thus, the principal objective of this thesis is to challenge current approaches to the redevelopment of key industrial sites by unlocking the potentials and possibilities of their urban, cultural, and ecological landscapes for the radical rejuvenation and reintegration of these sites as anchors for positive development. This research resulted in a system of design that challenges current approaches, utilising surreal techniques to break assumptions and present new avenues of design research.