The Anthropocene Garden proposes a museum in the Garven Pits, a former gravel mine north-east of Winnipeg, Canada. This museum allows visitors to contemplate, explore and connect to the forces that shape our world in the Anthropocene. The Scraper, a large metal object, is dragged across the abandoned mine, initiating an endless process of landscape transformation where the mechanical scraping of the landscape is answered by natural forces over time – blurring the lines between what is “natural” and “industrial”. Ultimately, this museum is an architecture that is in a constant state of becoming, rather than a static state of being. The Anthropocene Garden is a testament to the sublimity of both the physical and temporal scales of natural and human-industrial alterations of landscapes.
The Garven PitsI was initially interested in how a small group of machines (dredges) working together over time, created a landscape larger than themselves. I explored this relationship in this drawing – creating drawing devices that formed a larger drawing.The Scraper’s form and effect was explored in a 1/100 scale model of an area within the larger site. The drawing shows the two Origins (positions are shifted along tracks on the site) and the Scraper. The scraper moves 1 meter per hour.Each building on the site was developed through drawings (such as the above)Overall Site PlanSite plan. After 25 years. The 2 Origins are re-positioned along tracks every 2.5 years.Site Plan. After 200+ years – natural forces of entropy and erosion react to the Scraper’s actions.In the Entry Building, a visitor walks through 3 machine rooms, where he/she witnesses the turbines and generators that powers the scraper.The 4 lookout rooms allow a visitor to look directly down one of the 10 trenches carved into the site by the scraper.Entry Building elevation.The Marker is located where all of the Scraper’s trenches intersect. The two concrete pillars make this point visible from any location in the site and weather over time. The markers also have a sheltered walkway that focus a visitor’s attention on the constantly changing trenches.The Pier allows visitors to witness the turbines powering the east origin, and enables them to swim by the water banks as they are gradually eroded by the scraper.The North and South Lookouts.
max sandred 