The Final Design Thesis considers the architectural relationship between the built and natural environment, and looks at the forgotten industrial remains upon landscapes of the Western coastline of Scotland, that historically helped create the industrial powerhouse of Glasgow, without reaping the same levels of post-in-dustrial regeneration.
Considering Patrick Geddes’ concept of the “region city”, the thesis examines the possibility of elevating and connecting smaller places related on a regional level to cities through a form of reciprocal architectural artefact, which mutually elevates and binds the city and region – enriching both rural and urban conditions.
Observing the Isle of Raasay’s unbalanced relationship between Glasgow’s post-industrial artefact left on the island and the island’s fragile natural ecosystems, the thesis questions the future re-purposing of these industrial scars through the insertion of carbon-positive, sustainable industry juxtaposed with a programme that actively rewilds the landscape affected by the years of private ownership and industrial misuse – and in doing so, attempts to reconnect both local and regional communities to the saving of the fragile natural landscape of this region.
The thesis sees this re-mediation of the industrial mining scar as a method of re-establishing ethical equi-libriums on a range of scales – between rural and urban, land and sea, industry and nature, and today’s consumption and climate change.