“This project examines the changing landscape of extraction, to study the impact of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data on these industries, and to envision new more sustainable and equitable futures for these environments.”
Today, many communities around the world face the question of how to inhabit disturbed environments, and what to do with the remainders of industrial and mining processes. On a planet that is increasingly negatively impacted by industrial activities, the good management of mine waste and the reclamation of mines—in particular, abandoned contaminated mine sites (mining reliability)—is a pressing imperative. This project is a collaboration between geologists, environmental scientists, social scientists, architects, and artists to collectively envision and study how extraction industries and technologies are changing in the present, and how to treat the future of large scale toxic mining sites in the Abitibi region of Québec.
To respond to the complex challenges these communities and their immediate environments are facing, we are conducting a year-long research-studio titled Architecture / Territoire / Information 4.0, and a series of on-site engagements with mining installations in Abitibi, Quebec. The purpose will be to examine the changing landscape of extraction, to study the impact of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data on these industries, and to envision new more sustainable and equitable futures for these environments.
To do so, we disrupt standard practices of waste management and mine site reclamation in the interest of better environmental care. We develop new pathways of recycling and reusing waste materials targeting the zero waste trends, create more ethical and holistic approaches to mine reclamation that take into consideration both the communities and the affected ecosystems, and rethink the measures, tools, and methods used to evaluate the environmental and social impacts of metal extraction industries and related infrastructures. We also be study the impacts of industry 4.0, Big Data, and AI on mine lifecycles for possible use in reclamation.
Reclaiming the Planet will be a three year long joint research collaboration between the Speculative Life Research Cluster at the Milieux Institute at Concordia University under the leadership of Dr. Orit Halpern, a team from the Mining and Environment Research Lab (RIME) at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue directed by Dr. Mostafa Benzaazoua and Dr. Martin Beauregard, and the Faculty of Planning at the School of Architecture of Université de Montréal through the involvement of Professor Alessandra Ponte, as well as community organizations, mine operators, and environmentalists in the Abitibi region. This collaboration is truly intersectorial, merging design and architecture, the social sciences and humanities, and the earth sciences.
This project was based on a research-studio by www.planetaryfutures.net.