A map is a context. This project is about contextualization. This process has helped me understand where landscape architecture currently sits as a discipline and offers hints as to where it might go in the future. The function of this mapping is as much about re-shaping an understanding of landscape architecture as it is about understanding landscape urbanism. Like architecture and city planning, landscape architecture is a discipline in constant flux, redefining its role with and relationship to parallel fields of thought and within broader disciplinary contexts. Over the last few decades it has become apparent that landscape architecture has emerged as a discipline strongly capable of reshaping urban space. Ideas regarding landscapes as active, dynamic, operational systems have paralleled the discipline’s growing relevance within an urban context. In this time landscape urbanism has emerged as a reaction to landscape architecture’s role within our changing world. For landscape urbanism to contribute anything of value to the future of urbanism, or to the design disciplines, it needs to be contextualized within the larger framework of which it is part, without this context landscape urbanism has no relevance. Where it has come from must be critically assessed as a way to understand its intentions and potential future. Landscape urbanism may expand architecture’s boundaries to include elements of landscape thinking, but it does not expand the boundaries of landscape design. Its attempt to generate a new approach for urbanism is innovative as architecture, in its effort to expand the discipline’s understanding of site, but as a design discipline, or a strategic approach to thinking, landscape urbanism is not innovative.

A map is a context. This project is about contextualization. This process has helped me understand where landscape architecture currently sits as a discipline and offers hints as to where it might go in the future. The function of this mapping is as much about re-shaping an understanding of landscape architecture as it is about understanding landscape urbanism. Like architecture and city planning, landscape architecture is a discipline in constant flux, redefining its role with and relationship to parallel fields of thought and within broader disciplinary contexts. Over the last few decades it has become apparent that landscape architecture has emerged as a discipline strongly capable of reshaping urban space. Ideas regarding landscapes as active, dynamic, operational systems have paralleled the discipline’s growing relevance within an urban context. In this time landscape urbanism has emerged as a reaction to landscape architecture’s role within our changing world. For landscape urbanism to contribute anything of value to the future of urbanism, or to the design disciplines, it needs to be contextualized within the larger framework of which it is part, without this context landscape urbanism has no relevance. Where it has come from must be critically assessed as a way to understand its intentions and potential future. Landscape urbanism may expand architecture’s boundaries to include elements of landscape thinking, but it does not expand the boundaries of landscape design. Its attempt to generate a new approach for urbanism is innovative as architecture, in its effort to expand the discipline’s understanding of site, but as a design discipline, or a strategic approach to thinking, landscape urbanism is not innovative.

Quarrying of limestone on the Swedish island of Gotland dates all the way back to the 5th century but saw the rise of its modern form during the early 20th century, with the establishment of Cementa AB at Slite, which since then has developed as an industrial town. Cementa has been progressively mining limestone in three large open pit quarries in Slite. Their factory accounts for approximately three quarters of Sweden’s cement production and is considered to be a vital part of the construction industry. However, the ecological and social damages caused by the extractive procedures far exceed the economic incentive and has triggered numerous debates on whether they should be allowed to continue production.   This project henceforth envisions an alternate post-extraction future for Slite’s mine-scape, where the production of cement will shift from extracting limestone to growing limestone using calcareous microalgae. The leftover quarries will be regenerated, the factory will be repurposed, and the contextual industrial land will be developed, improved, and enhanced for the benefit of the surrounding community and visitors. By shifting to a net-zero carbon method of producing cement, alternate industries will develop in place which will also resolve Slite’s socio-economic dependency on limestone and diversify its mono-cultural economy. A 30-year protocol is planned to transform the urban-industrial fabric of Slite into a microalgae farming field and extreme sports destination - creating an anthroposcenic garden in which production, everyday life and leisure are meant to be compatible. While the quarries will undergo a natural rewilding process, this proposal does not intend to artificially restore the quarries entirely to their original landscapes but rather acknowledge our anthropogenic actions as irreversible and consequential; and hence engage with this damaged landscape to find new uses for it.