The project is an architectural and landscape restoration of a marble quarries in Brembana Valley, the aim of the project is recover these places to enhance landscape and local materials, the purpose is converting thequarries into a cultural spaces and artistic marble experimentation areas.

Today, mining sites like quarries, are perceived as places of degradation. What happens to a quarry after its exploitation? Since quarrying is an inevitable and irreversible process on the territory, the “post-quarry recovery project” is a concept that has to be thought in advance, because it has to be aligned with both the planning excavation process and the metamorphosis involved in the quarry.The San Giovanni Bianco quarries are an important example of abandoned places inside a powerful wildness of the Brembana valley. It’s necessary recover those forgotten places and in particular enhance the beauty of those hidden landscape characterized by history of a great past. The project site is characterized by the presence of natural elements, including Brembo river and Valle Parina. In this area two types of quarries are identified with two different project interventions.: one is an underground quarryand the other is an outdoor one.

Architectural intervention I The project first aims at designing low impact interventions within the two quarries, in particular by using waste site material to restore existing buildings and design new architectural solutions. Theunderground quarry surface area is 25.000 sqm and in this site the extraction activity is over. Interventions focus on connecting new functional spaces and, in this regard, the project develops in an ex-working area of marble manufacturing, This area is characterized by existing buildings that will be converted into laboratories and servicesfor the artistic research of marble manufacture. Inside, the approach aims at respecting the existing natural “unevenness architecture” of the cave, using marble blocks obtained from the site to design concert hall and acultural space for events. Two important aspects define this first quarry: lighting and sound quality. The entire lighting system is hidden in the floor and sound quality is solved by steel stalactites on the ceiling of the cave, integrated with insulating acoustic panels. Another element of the project are hiking routs that will be converted in new accessible pedestrian paths.

Architectural intervention II In The outdoor quarry the situation is different. This area is in its initial phase and no marble has been extracted yet, therefore the intervention will develop by trying to change the formal quarry plan and modifying the extraction process. Infact, after the excavations, the outdoor quarry will become a “marble park” characterized by huge volumes that contains some services for the new park and the external thermal pool. This will emphasise the relationship between architecture and excavated space. Finally, the project will include a new restaurant and hotel made up of small residential units nestled between rocks and trees as support for mountain tourism and artists who will work in the new laboratories and working spaces used for the processing of stonematerials.

The project was developed at the Politecnico of Milano.

KOOZ What prompted the project?

MM A chance encounter with a special place. A few years ago, at the beginning of my university career in architecture, I found myself inside a quarry working on a survey. It was my first time inside an extraction site, so I was impressed both by the scale of the place and by the gigantic size of the boulders I saw there, inlaid with reddish-grey veins. What struck me most was the history of the quarry – I could perceive all that past work and effort, where the relationship between man and stone had been defined through what are now archaic tools. Sometime later the idea of restoring the site came into being, and not just the quarry but also the surrounding area with its alpine pastures, shepherd’s huts, woods, meadows and tiny hamlets nestling on the mountain-side above the valley. The driving force behind the whole project was the love I feel for my native mountains, for this land and the culture that typifies it. The goal of my project is therefore the enhancement of an entire valley that in recent years has suffered abandonment by man while nature has reclaimed more and more space. The restoration of the quarry could be a springboard to launch all of this.

KOOZ What questions does the project raise and which questions does it address?

MM The project stems from the need to answer a question that unites most extraction sites – what happens to a quarry after its exploitation phase has been completed? Today, mining sites like quarries are seen as places of degradation. Since quarrying is an inevitable and irreversible process in this geographical area, the “post-quarry recovery project” is a concept that has to be set out in advance. It has to be aligned with both the excavation planning process and the metamorphosis involved in the quarry site itself.

Through the quarry project, numerous opportunities can be created for the micro-economy that characterizes these places as well as exploiting the potential of the mountain location through a project that aims to restore and reuse what already belongs to it. Another ambitious goal, especially in this moment of economic and social difficulty, is the search for new perspectives to enhance marble. The modern-day world of work offers support and opens up new opportunities to innovate around the use of this material. The new commercial dynamics that have emerged in recent years will increasingly have digital tools to create and manage internal and global strategies. Living and working in the valley with teleworking will become sustainable.

KOOZ How does the project approach notions of restoration and conservation?

MM Inside the many quarries of our geographical area, the signs of the marble extraction operations of the past can still be seen today. It has characterized much of the Bergamasco area since the 1960s. Today we are left with a “hidden heritage” of huge abandoned blocks, skeletons of machinery, steel cables and cuts in stone. These testify to a process that has been suspended for a long time. One of the project’s objectives was to integrate this system of historical elements with the architectural project, both by preserving what remains by restoring it, and by reusing it as an integral or structural element within the project.

Telling the story of the life of the quarry through the project was crucial. This involved integrating it with new functions, adding a museum concept and promoting the cultural use of the site via an intervention that could put the extraction of marble back into operation. This would favour artistic and local development. At the design level, the direction chosen was to reuse the material in various design scales, both as the protagonist material of landscape architecture and as a construction element. Most of the elements extracted during processing are downgraded as the commercial market requires standard formats. The project primarily uses waste blocks, which will become construction elements and at the service of the project’s architecture.

KOOZ How does the project seek to raise awareness around the act of quarrying? How sustainable is this today?

MM At the end of each extraction process, these “artificial cemeteries” turn up with enormous quantities of material abandoned among the vegetation. Today, the recovery of any quarry site is planned through a “quarry plan” and takes place through an attempt to restore the environment that is often resolved with a simple land fill, integrated with planting. This “standard” system consequently involves a different soil design than the original one, reflecting how irreversible the consequences of the extraction process are. The environmental aspect is therefore predominant, the project mainly aims to raise awareness of the extraction process, so that it can adapt according to the morphological and landscape aspect of the area undergoing excavation. What could be done today, and what this project calls for, is a priori planning of what the quarry will become after its exploitation.

KOOZ What informed the programme of the project?

MM The project site is divided into two areas with different characteristics, consequently the project had to adapt chronologically to a certain temporality. In fact, I dealt with two different cases of intervention, the first in which the underground quarry has partly ceased and the second in which the extraction process has yet to begin. Furthermore, an important aspect was the evaluation of which intervention to develop first, in order to integrate both the extraction process in the external quarry and the construction of the architecture around it. The first quarry is intended to create new and modern opportunities for work and artistic experimentation with the material on site, particularly in the mountain areas, the second for an environmental planning that is oriented to the “after quarry” phase.

KOOZ How do you imagine the project engaging with the surrounding context and community?

MM In this project, what has been considered are the life and cultural values of the mountain, understood not only as naturalistic beauty but also as a place rich in culture and millenary traditions. The San Giovanni quarry project could trigger a series of events and projects that would involve not only neighbouring communities but also the entire Brembana valley. This is because today there are many local realities that have taken action to enhance the area, enhancing the naturalistic and culinary aspect, linked to the local raw materials.

The project could be a driving force for an objective that is not only architectural and isolated from the simple quarry, but also urban planning and on a territorial scale, thus uniting multiple stakeholders with different enhancement objectives. A close relationship must certainly be defined with the “former mines of Dossena”. About 1 km away from the marble quarries, they consist of tens of km of small tunnels that were active until the 1980s to collect calamine and fluorite. Today they are the subject of a real project, under construction, of recovery for tourist-cultural purposes. This would create a “park of marble and mines” in a place of great environmental and naturalistic value of great interest, where history and future mutually enhance each other.

KOOZ What are your ambitions for the project as it develops through time?

MM One of the challenges to face is the evolutionary process of the project. Considering the chronological aspect, the first phase of the project is linked to the development of the accessible and cultural aspect, defining the interior spaces of the first quarry with Concert hall, landscape paths, lighting and artistic workshops for marble processing. Subsequently, in the external quarry, it would be interesting to define the design steps that would adapt to the typical times of excavation and extraction of the material, which usually approach 5/6 years. In this way, different consequential configurations of the quarry can be developed that allow the functions of the project to be integrated simultaneously with the excavation. First of all by inserting temporary cabins to support workers during the initial stages of the excavation and which will subsequently be transformed into units for accommodation. I like to think that the quarry is like a large block of marble that can gradually be transformed into something more purely sculptural than architectural.

Bio

Michele Mazzoleni is an architect graduated from the Politecnico di Milano. He obtained the Shortlisted Position at the YTAA 2020 with the research work: “San Giovanni Bianco after the quarries, a landscape restoration in the extraction areas”. Thesis project tutor: Prof.Valerio Tolve. He collaborates in research and teaching within the Department of Architecture of the Politecnico di Milano.