paisajes del metabolismo

The study area is a totally deteriorated ex-lignite mine in the area of Aminteo in Western Macedonia, Greece of 2.200ha extent.  In 2019, the Public Power Corporation S.A. of Greece (DEI) announced a spatial landscape design competition for the environmental rehabilitation and productive reintegration of it. The topic is crucial for the economy and for the visual and sustainable upgrading of the area, but it also consists of an interesting and emblematic attempt to rethink the 20th century’s industrial past and possible methods of its reincorporation to contemporary society. 

Topio7’s project “Landscapes of metabolism” won the 3rd prize of the competition. The main aim of the project is to facilitate the rebirth of a productive and fertile landscape, maintaining the genius loci of the site and the memory of the past use. Using ecology as a spatial structural tool of the restoration process, a new landscape entity is being produced. The project acts as a strategy in four thematic axes: ecology - landscape restoration, connectivity - circulation, uses – production and landscape identity – past industrial genius loci.

The core idea is the creation of a spatial organization system that will give geometry, form, and life to the vast and out of scale place, facilitating the interconnection and habitats’ ecological recuperation. This proposed network defines clearly the blurred borders of the area and forms a series of successive zones of agriculture, forest plantations, new uses, and movements. The final result is being supported by landscape metabolism processes, configuring different characters and spatial qualities’ landscapes, that give birth to an ecologically restored, visually pleasant and healthy site. This restored landscape is connected with the surrounding areas and transformed into a pole of social attraction, bringing revitalization to the local economy. The site will recuperate its agricultural identity, but it will also offer uses of: ecotourism, recreation, culture, sports, scientific and renewable energy research, and an industrial heritage exhibition area. 

Through these planning gestures, the project reconnects, interconnects and incorporates the existing degraded parts into a new landscape continuum. The new landscape canvas is experiencing a constant and dynamic ecological change through time, proposing at the same time a new innovative and ecological model for contemporary landscape restoration methods. The intervention is of a wider environmental, economic, aesthetic and social importance, aiming for the Just transition of the region and 21st-century societies to the post-lignite era.