This project responds to the environmental damage caused by mining and construction, focusing on an abandoned limestone quarry in San Francisco. Once a hub of resource extraction, the site was shut down in 2023 due to environmental violations, and community resistance. The project acknowledges the irony that materials taking millennia to form are used in buildings lasting only a few decades—many of which end up as landfill waste, a major contributor to global pollution.
Instead of beautifying or erasing the quarry, the design amplifies its raw, unsettling presence to evoke emotional and environmental awareness. Following a reflective experience, visitors are invited to participate in immersive, labor-based activities—such as cultivating seedlings—that cultivate a personal connection to the land’s recovery. The architecture, built with rammed earth, is designed to decompose and return to nature, challenging conventional ideas of permanence. Through this transformation, the quarry becomes a site of reckoning, reflection, and renewal—where human intervention shifts from exploitation to healing.
