Inhabiting Manufactured Landscape: An Architectural Approach to Minnesota’s Post-Industrial Iron Range

Abstract

Surface mining has created manufactured landscapes all over the world. While often viewed in a negative light as ‘scars on the land,’ they are a tangible imprint of humanity’s action on the landscape. Through the lens of photographers and artists whose depiction of these industrial manufactured landscapes are simultaneously menacing and celebratory, this thesis aims to showcase the facets of these evocative landscapes which continue to fascinate humankind. The thesis rejects the standard method of mine reclamation on Minnesota’s Iron Range, which is to flood the pit and create a lake. Instead, the manufactured landscape is inhabited by means of a connection between two communities. The insertion of architecture to support a range of programs helps to engage and better understand these sublime and often restricted places.