Redesigning Wounded Landscapes (The IBA Workshop in Lausatia)

Our global thirst for energy and raw materials is increasing all the time. Year after year, humanity exhausts large quantities of mineral resources; the areas of the world in which we drill and dig for oil, gas, coal, gravel, clay and ore are becoming more and more remote, and the range of resources demanded is expanding constantly. Lusitania is a prime example of this kind of resource depletion. Unrestrained open-pit mining during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has devastated the region, and ten years ago this “wounded landscape” became the subject of an International Building Exhibition dedicated to providing creative designs for a post-mining landscape. What are the possibilities of such landscapes? What methods and processes may be applied in regions beyond Lusatia? In Redesigning Wounded Landscapes, ten authors explore these questions, looking at the region and the project from a wide range of perspectives.