Denisa Badoi

Competition: “120 hours” International Competition 2015
Theme: Experimental Preservation
Title: All-men’s land
Collaborators: Alexandru Barbu
Brief: The competition called for ideas on the preservation of an abandoned mining city, “Pyramiden” in the Svalbard Islands. The city had been abandoned over a decade ago when the mine supporting it ran dry. It left behind an unwanted, unvaluable architecture, on a hostile land now ruled only by polar bears. Naturally, normal methods of preservation could not be applied due to this unique context. Instead, the project had to be viewed as a challenge to redifine what we consider “preservation.” The main questions were: “should one look for value where there might not be any, for the sake of preservation?” or “should value be added through other practices at the expense of the city itself?”
Summary: Our project took advantage of the unique context of the city, but this did not mean its architecture or history. Instead we considered the unique climate and location that allowed nature to delay degradation of any materials in that area. This meant that nature was already doing quite a good job at preserving this value-less city, with scientists saying that Pyramiden’s buildings might be amogst the last ones to stand the test of time. That meant that in the far future the Colosseum, the Leaning tower of Pisa and other monuments of humanity will be long gone with only Pyramiden as a remaining time-capsule. That is why we decided to add value to the site and propose that all cultures bring a “monument” to this time-capsule, transforming the site from a “no-man’s land” to  an“all-men’s land.” The monuments were to then be covered together under a degradable but unifying cloak, only to be revealed in that far future when nature would have allowed the cloak to melt away.