Description of project by Topio7
The competition is about the environmental rehabilitation and transformation of the deteriorated lignite mines in the area of Aminteo in Western Macedonia, Greece (2.200ha).
Main aim of Topio7’s project is to facilitate the rebirth of a productive and fertile landscape, maintaining the genius loci of the site and the memory of the past use. Using ecology as a spatial regulator of the restoration process, a new landscape entity is being produced, connected with the surrounding areas and supported by renewable sources of energy. The site will recuperate its agricultural identity, but it will also offer uses of tourism and recreation that will become poles of attraction. The project acts as a strategy in four thematic axes: ecology, agricultural production, landscape restoration and culture.
The core idea is the creation of a spatial organization system that will define clearly the blurred borders of the area and will form a series of successive zones of agriculture, forest plantations, uses and movements. This proposed network gives geometry to the vast and out of scale site, facilitating the interconnection and habitats’ ecological recuperation. The final result is being supported by landscape metabolism processes, configurating a series of different characters’ and spatial qualities’ landscapes.
Through these planning gestures, the project reconnects, interconnects and incorporates the existing degraded parts into a new landscape continuum. The new landscape canvas is experiencing a constant and dynamic ecological change through time, offering simultaneously a rich program of uses and possibilities for the local society.
