Today, reusing and adapting existing spatial resources is regarded around the world as an important contribution to sustainable development, and new challenges are thus also emerging at the margins of classic building tasks due to the changing assessments regarding whether to preserve or demolish. Xu Tiantian’s projects in the quarries of Jinyun combine aspects of landscape planning, interior design, artistic installations, and social planning with an economic revitalization of the rural area. In this way, a ruined and exploited landscape becomes a sign of departure with which a new sustainable coexistence can be linked to a narrative about the history of the location.
Unconventional Spatial Resources in Jinyun County
Jinyun County in the southwest of Zhejiang Province is located only a few kilometers to the east of Songyang County, both of which are administered by the prefectural city of Lishui. In the northern part of Jinyun, the landscape is characterized by the meandering loops of the Hao River and by weathered, picturesque, ancient volcanic landscapes. The Xiandu Scenic Area is one of 280 tourist destinations rated 5A by the national administration and already attracts many tourists. Famous scholars have extolled the stunning scenery for its unique beauty since the Song Dynasty (960–1279). Today, Jinyun County has a population of over 467,000 in its eighteen towns.
Jinyun County was already mentioned in the Spring and Autumn Annals (722–481 BC) and the Warring States Period (475–221 BC) as the site of one of the three great palaces of the legendary Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), who has been revered as the founder of the Chinese nation for over 5000 years. On the riverbank stands the world’s tallest monolithic stone pillar, Dinghu Peak, at over 170 meters, from where, according to legend, the Yellow Emperor flew to heaven on a dragon. The temple dedicated to him was, however, destroyed during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and was not rebuilt until 1994. Since then, it has regularly been used for commemorative ceremonies and has been listed as National Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2011. The calligraphic rock inscriptions found in the Xiandu Scenic Area are another cultural attraction in the region. There are 125 rock inscriptions, two of which date from the Tang Dynasty (617/18–907), fifty-five from the Song Dynasty (960–1279), twenty-eight from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), eight from the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), sixteen from the Republican Period (1912–1949), and ten from modern times. The rock inscriptions have been protected as cultural monuments since 2001 and are of great historical and artistic significance since they span a long period of time and display a wide range of calligraphic styles.
Jinyun County, almost 80 percent of whose landscape is forested, borders seven other counties. It has a warm and humid subtropical monsoon climate with four distinct seasons. The Xiandu Scenic Area encompasses an impressive natural landscape that has always been a significant source of inspiration for scholars and Taoists and has served as a setting for over 200 films that have been shot in recent years. Because of its great cultural significance, many poetic attributes have been assigned to the area. Hence, in Chinese, the area is called Xiandu, which translates as ‘fairyland’. Today, the region is also known for ecological tourism, which will be expanded further in the future.
The Quarries of Jinyun缙云石宕
In the region, there are more than 3000 small abandoned quarries, which until recently—with few exceptions—were exploited by hand without the assistance of machines. The nine quarries that Xu Tiantian and her team are working on are located in a valley that is part of the Xiandu Scenic Area. In order to support regional development, the project aims at ecological improvements. At the same time, the measures being realized create social and cultural locations that serve both the local population and visitors. The converted and repurposed quarries will become part of a public infrastructure that puts historical aspects and everyday cultural heritage dating back over a thousand years in a new context.
The quarries are located north of Dinghu village along a route of about one kilometer in a valley that divides two mountain ranges diagonally from the southwest to the northeast. A country road lined with small hamlets runs through the valley. Six of the quarries are located in the western mountain range and three of them in the eastern range and are interlinked conceptually by a path that forms a space of experience. An information center will be built directly on the road in the valley in a future stage of the project.
Potential of the Quarries
Tufa, an igneous volcanic rock that is found around the world and whose color can vary from grey to yellowish, brownish, and reddish to bright red, has been quarried in the region for over 1000 years. The rock was used regionally as hewn masonry stone or tuff for construction as well as stone sculpture. Due to the ecological impact of the small family-owned quarries, stone quarrying came to an end and its heritage became a negative resource whose potential did not seem to be exploitable. The quarries had been left on their own for many years and sometimes decades, and reusing them also made it necessary to secure loose stones and boulders, since rock formations simply collapse again and again. After all, safety was a decisive criterion in the selection of the places where a new use would be possible.
Each of the spaces in the rock is different, having been shaped at random by the particular mining strategy. Some were quarried from the top down, and others from the middle of the mountain upwards or downwards, depending on the quality of the stones. This gave rise to complex sequences of spaces with breakthroughs towards the outside and above, which today represent great spatial potential.
Local Resources
What Xu Tiantian and her team’s projects to transform the quarries all have in common is that they are all being realized with simple means and that the interventions remain as minimal as possible in every case. On the one hand, this makes it possible to preserve the original character, and, on the other hand, the design stimulates sustainable, future-oriented development that brings improvements to the stressed ecosystem. The details of the installations are the same at all the sites, and concrete is used solely for necessary safety measures. The handrails are made of steel strips and the infill of shelves and railings of pressed bamboo, which is more suitable for this climate than wood.
The conceptual position and the use of local resources determined the approach. The sensitive strategy, adapted to local needs, transforms the negative legacy of the exploitation of natural resources into a symbol of hope in the rural hinterland.
Subterranean Space
Natural caves, in which early humans sought shelter from the climate, are regarded as the archetype of enclosed space. Until today, there are inhabited caves all over the world: in Matera, Italy, in Coober Pedy, Australia, and in Spain, Tunisia, or Turkey. The Yaodong buildings dug into the loess in Shanxi Province in China still bear witness to this ecologically sensitive form of dwelling. In all cases, it is a sort of subtractive architecture, since rocks or earth had to be removed to create the space. The quarries of Jinyun, in contrast, are not caves that were once used as dwellings, because the spaces were created incidentally by the quarrying of the stone.
The rock in the mountains was regarded as a store of material to be exploited with simple technology for over 1000 years, with the stones used locally for building houses. The negative spaces that were created when the rock was extracted resulted from the manual labor and how the stonemasons dug into the mountain. The traces of the craftsmen on the rock faces are witnesses to the history of the location and are now being put in a new light like archaeological excavations. This history with its traces of human exploitation becomes the starting point for a sustainable future that offers the local population a new perspective.
Quarries as Potential
In phases of prosperity and urbanization, quarries have sprung up all over the world, and bear witness to their exploitation by human beings. In China, too, the unbridled demand for building materials over the past few decades has left many wounds in the landscapes, for which new solutions must be found today.
Famous historic quarries have also been placed under protection if they have special cultural aspects. In Nanjing, for example, the Yangshan Quarry has been listed as a provincial cultural monument since 1956. In it lie three oversized, half-finished stelae weighing between 6000 and 16000 tonnes from the early fifteenth century, which were intended for the tomb of the founder of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Hongwu (1328–1398).
There are also famous quarries in Europe, such as in St. Margarethen in the Austrian state of Burgenland, which is now included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as a cultural asset. Stone has been quarried there for over 2000 years and sculpture symposia have regularly been held there for over sixty years, a fact to which more than fifty contemporary on-site sculptures still bear witness today. In addition, Passion Plays and operas are regularly performed in the open-air venue, attracting thousands of visitors.
Another example was created by the French landscape architect Bernard Lassus, who transformed the Crazannes quarries located next to a motorway in southwest France, to the north of Bordeaux, into a land art project. As part of a motorway service station, he opened up the side embankments along the road and exposed the historic quarry behind them, which has now become a recreation area for motorists.
Genius Loci
In Jinyun, however, things are quite different. The many small-scale quarries, exploited as family businesses, require a specific strategy that meets local needs and brings new meaning to the rural economy as well as the ecology of the region. For the spatial adaptation of the mining sites, Xu Tiantian and her team developed concepts between landscape design, land art, and interior design using the means of architecture. But typical architectural elements, a floor plan, the volume of the rooms, and the shape of the roof or the façade, only play a quite subordinate role or are not present at all. The architect and her team thus concentrated on other aspects that define new qualities as a reaction to the given situation.
Basically, it is about realizing a new relationship of tension between nature and culture, in which the atmospheric space of experience plays a significant role. The spaces randomly carved into the rock are simultaneously inside and outside, with a concentration on massive materiality. Sunlight enters through narrow openings at the top and stages the spaces in dynamic motion. Artificial lighting, in contrast, is utilized as a stabilizing aspect and thus brings to life the interiors with their static materiality, organic form, and cohesiveness. As an extension of the introverted caves, the architects have planned various platforms with views that repeatedly bring various aspects of the post-mining landscape into focus. The duality of open and closed, of concentrated towards the inside and openness towards the outside, creates a tension in which the heterogeneity of the entire landscape can be experienced.
The potential of the new locations that have emerged from the ruins caused by exploitation develops into a stage for a culture that brings a new perspective to village communities in the region both ecologically and economically. The decision to undertake the smallest interventions possible, which focus above all on the safety of visitors and the question of meaningful use, is translated by the architect into recognizable images that, as a unique selling point with a collective impact, have transformed the former quarries from a landscape of ruins into a romantic setting. All in all, this is about nothing less than expanding the boundaries of architecture by means of a new ambiance based on the spirit of the location and putting architecture at the service of sustainable development.
*This article was first published on world-architects.com.
