Prospect Portal : a Layered Landscape

Abstract

Village Main No. 1 Shaft represents one of the last remaining examples of mining architecture from the 1886 Johannesburg gold rush. Today, it is emblematic of the issues faced by sites of industrial heritage. This dissertation investigates architecture’s role as a potential mediator between polluted natural systems and latent industrial architecture through exploring the combination of heritage and environmental theories. In so doing, it develops an archetype for a new layer of industrial architecture capable of regenerating latent industrial sites. Village Main is the case study with the intention of it becoming a precedent for industrial architecture that is capable of establishing and sustaining mutually beneficial relationships between industry and nature. Regenerative layering is used as a means of combining the lost prospects of the site’s past, the threatened prospects of its current situation and the prospects of its future.