Mari K. Helland

Muddled Futures: Clay Energy and Other Clay Stories

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

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Maquette model, platform study, non-extractive post-petroleum platform.

A Post-Petroleum Future

“Muddled Futures: Clay Energy and Other Clay Stories” is rooted in the muddy landscape of Aberdeen. Drawn out from the city’s historical pottery industry, it investigates the potentials posed by clay-infrastructures in a post-petroleum world. Framed around the term ‘clay energy,’ it explores the energetic fluxes in and facilitated by clay in order to imagine a clay infrastructure that can help shift the tallies of power between the large petroleum industry and vulnerable communities.

A Post-Petroleum Typology: From Clay History to Clay Future

Forming a Post-Petroleum Typology

The thesis prompt, “clay energy”, surfaces through attentive investigation of Aberdeen’s landscape, the erosive fluxes that has shaped it and their material outcomes. It is investigated both broadly and exactly, employing an interdisciplinary approach to draw out definitions and elicit its potential for a post-petroleum world. Probing the topic through academic research, film and drawing, an understanding of clay muds and clay soils as energetic and lively matter is established. Energetic fluxes identified through these exercises becomes the ground to imagine methods to utilize, restore and acknowledge an otherwise unknown world as we imagine a post-petroleum future.

Mappings in Clay and Dirt

Muddled Futures Abstract

The project is situated in Torry, where the continued expansion of large industrial estates has eaten up the majority of the community’s greenspace. A Clay Energy Hub and Community Centre aims to strengthen the standard of living for residents through addressing issues of fuel poverty and lack of public greenspace. Activating “clay energy” and the subsequent understanding of clay soils as fertile and energetic soils, the project sets out to re-energize Torry’s ground by re-soiling two large industrial states.

Craiginches Yard is transformed into a Clay Energy Hub, housing a clay energy-infrastructure that re-commissions waste from the petroleum industry. It establishes a common ground where the community can capitalize and reconcile with the remnants of their petroleum past, becoming a beacon of hope and prosperity in the community.

Soil Mixing Facility & Community Centre

The project proposes five architectural support structures. Celebrating the industrial system in the existing silo building at Craiginches Yard, the existing building is re-commissioned as a non-pressured and non-prescriptive community space and mud mixing and storage facility. A pillar of the site’s social and material infrastructure, it stands as a symbol of the reconciliation between the community and Torry’s industry.