The Madelvic Car Factory sits at the centre of the Granton Waterfront Regeneration Project. The dilapidated building evidences the dramatic decline of industrial activities in the area. The thesis aims to preserve and celebrate the site’s history—and to repurpose the existing structure—while also coming to grips with its pollution and toxic remainders, and finding architectural and tectonic protocols for ‘staying with’ them in space and time. The remedial architectures proposed seek to foreground and choreograph the risks and injustices associated with the (often invisible or unnoticed) interaction between bodies, soils, and toxicants.
Phyto-Remedial Architectures curates safe working spaces and protocols for the processing of large quantities of contaminated earth, so that the material may be re-introduced into the construction industry. On one side, the site is enclosed by a ramp that acts as a protective boundary, also allowing visitors to witness remediation steps, to learn about the corresponding risks and procedures, and to understand the correlation between exposure and injustice. The ramp leads visitors to the upper level of the factory, which is used for material and repurposing workshops.
Alternatively, visitors can enter the so-called Toxic Garden—a terrace that, by visually correlating the remediation of wastes (their bio-availability) with the slow erosion of their earthy containers, emphasises the spatio-temporal dimensions of hazard and risk. The terrace comprises two levels: the lower one marked by visual and sensory warnings; the upper one by a bright, open, and inviting space—a hopeful reminder that a contaminated earth can be reclaimed.
