STUDENT WORK

thesis: Learning from Post-Industrial Landscapes |

Agency in the Economy of Reclamation 

Location: Guadalupe, California

Type: student work

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The effects of industrialization are experienced within communities that navigate the persistent appetite of slowly accumulated pollution and contaminant leaks.  The underground pollution of Guadalupe, CA is symptomatically similar to thousands of post-industrial areas that have been rendered ‘useless’ by years of extraction, dumping and abandonment.  Within this arid agricultural valley water pollution, nutrient draw-down, and industrial pollution confound the existing challenges of chronic underemployment and struggling school systems.   

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This thesis is a diagram of active recovery through place making and education. The product is the process and a framework for a shifted understanding of ‘nature’ as it relates to today’s social and physical framework.

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Here one is encouraged to explore the potential for reclamation, education. This is an exploration of the challenges that are inherent to post-industrial communities and landscapes, and of new approaches to learning and employment that are exposed.