Oeuvre au Noir: Materiality Inertias and Design Opportunitiesat the Entrance of an Abandoned Mining Site

We explore the responsibilities of the architect and educator in rediscovering the materiality of a territory. The redesign experience of a small building situated at the entrance of an abandoned mining site in Italy from the 1930s serves as a vehicle to reflect on architecture’s relevancy in reestablishing the primacy of the artifact and its empirical intelligence. Against the background of contemporary territorial strategies, we present a drama in four acts. Entwining the past with the present, from the unattended promises of fascist colonization to the new hegemony of algorithmic exactitude, we highlight the importance of collaborative design efforts and material operations envisaging a new phenomenology for “the Built.”