Architecture for New Energy Futures: Community and Infrastructure in a Post-Coal World

Abstract

For the past 300 years, the coal mining industry has fundamentally shaped the landscapes and communities of Cape Breton, which hosts the majority of Nova Scotia’s fossil fuel infrastructure. This thesis mobilizes Cape Breton’s clean energy potential to engage a new energy paradigm, in which architecture, technology, and nature intersect to foster dynamic and resilient interactions between communities and the Earth’s limited resources.

Focusing on the Lingan Generating Station, anticipated to be fully decommissioned by 2029, this project envisions a post-coal paradigm that situates energy production in an experiential landscape. Encompassing a research centre, a public park, and renewable energy infrastructures, the project addresses a new form of economic and social revitalization within a larger vision for the relationship between energy, community, and culture that is adaptable to other settings in Canada, where the challenges of the Anthropocene are most palpable and can be played out in new energy policies.