Deep Time: Architecture + Forensics
Graduate Architecture Degree Project
Washington University in St. Louis
Instructors: Derek Hoeferlin and Julie Bauer
[above: limestone outcropping along the Mississippi River]
On the order of millions and billions of years, deep time represents all of the processes that have gone into creating the lithosphere of the planet we occupy today. The early affective register of deep time was one of wonder and terror, fashioned to fit a vision of the sublime that transcended yet somehow affirmed our humanity. One of the ways in which Saint Louis has directly engaged with deep time has been through limestone. The city has a long and rich history with limestone particularly as a resource extracted from the many quarries throughout the region. The site of this project is an abandoned limestone quarry located north of Saint Louis, Missouri and adjacent to the Missouri River.
[above: context map showing prominent St. Louis limestone formation - project site in red; below: process studies carving, cutting, excavating layers of glued paper - understanding palimpsest and forensics]
If the land can be understood as a layered assemblage, a dynamic palimpsest where layers can be read though one another, erased, re-written, eroded, stratified, then it becomes a kind of material witness recording cultural, political, social histories as well as climatic, hydrological, and geological histories. The framing of the land in this way offers an opportunity for a forensic investigation, where pulling apart, disassembling, filtering, and other archival strategies come into play.
Within this framework two architectural questions emerge. First, how can architecture also act as material witness expanding the field of spatial investigation and inquiry, particularly in how they are responding to and relating changing geological, climatic, political conditions. Secondly, how can architecture act as a forensic device, an instrument through which the landscape palimpsest and the layers that constitute it can be understood.
Our buildings and our landscapes, as actors in processes such as erosion, weathering, deposition, stratification, record these events in such a way that can be re-read and re-understood. A forensic understanding of a record suggests a point view framed by the past. We are able to piece together or reveal a narrative of things that have previously occurred. We can however re-frame this discourse with an eye to the future considering that our landscapes and our buildings may act as measuring devices, forensic devices from which we can later on retrieve valuable information. We might also use our built environment as a particular link between past and future. This could mean (re)inhabiting buildings subjected to destruction, ruin, or decay, or it could mean designing new our buildings in such a way that they consider future conditions with the intent of recording and measuring. What future conditions could we design for? How could a building be designed as a measuring or forensic device? Especially in a context of changing environmental conditions, the use of instruments, devices, and architectural inventions provides a means through which we can understand and respond to these changes.
This project has three objectives:
1) To foster an engagement of researchers and the public with deep time through two modes of scientific inquiry.
2) To begin to understand the scale of sites of excavation such as limestone quarries and to ask how we can [re]occupy these post-industrial landscapes.
3) To explore a way of building in and engaging with these landscapes through material and spatial organization.
The program for this project is an Earth and planetary sciences research facility and exhibition space. There are two primary research components, an astronomical observatory housing a large synoptic survey telescope, and a deep drilling borehole that continuously drills into the earth’s crust producing and archiving geologic core samples. The observatory and borehole are positioned to understand, record, and measure the palimpsest comprised of not only the geological, geographical, and climatological layers of the earth and atmosphere, but also the dimension of deep time. This position combined with the program draws an explicit line (the borehole) from the site to the centre of the earth, and an implied line (the gaze of the telescope) from the site into space. The architecture is embedded into the site at a point of mediation between geology and astronomy, earth and space, matter and light, along an extended axis of deep time.
The architecture is composed of the research and exhibition space, positioned at the edge of the quarry excavation, and the observatory and borehole, held within a structural tower extending from the top of the quarry to the bottom. Access between the research/exhibition space and the observatory/borehole is provided by a covered walkway. At the entrance to the building a ramp descends from the ground level into the earth. The research and exhibition space are dug into the limestone having no real façade, using the exposed limestone rock as interior walls, and so consists of a roof structure supported by the limestone bedrock. By using exposed limestone as interior walls the architecture attempts to create two scales of engagement with the geology; the interior architectural scale and the scale of the site and quarry.
Entering the building researchers have access to workstations, meeting space, and a small library space. The public descends an exposed limestone stairway which also serves as seating for a small auditorium where public lectures and other events can happen. From the exhibition and research space, an enclosed walkway leads to the telescope. From there an elevator and exterior stairway descends to an observation platform that sits at the top of the borehole, positioned between the two modes of scientific investigation, the telescope now above, the borehole below. Visitors are presented with a gaze upward, a gaze downward and a gaze out into the landscape of the quarry. The observation platform aligns with a cut around the entire quarry. The face of the cut is polished limestone and the cut itself forms a path for walking. The continuous band of polished limestone is perceived from the observation platform and along the path are markers indicating different geologic time periods.
As geologic cores are retrieved from the borehole they are cleaned, examined, recorded and exhibited within the exhibition space of the building. These are curated samples that are supported between the floor and ceiling of the 24 foot high space. Other core sample get archived within the quarry itself, embedded into the polished cut of rock that forms the path around the perimeter of the quarry. With this, two scales of observation are created; geologic observation at the scale of the core samples, and astronomical observation at the scale of the quarry. Opening up to the sky the quarry itself becomes an observatory in its own way.
Through this project we can challenge the notion of humanity as a domesticator/dominator of the land in a place where we have attempted to do so. The alignment of two modes of scientific inquiry along an axis of deep time attempts to use the quarry as a site of observation, to understand how we might occupy these post-industrial landscapes, and to help us establish an understanding of our planet and its (and our) place in the larger cosmos.