Name: Mattia De Lotto
Track: Architecture
Studio: Borders & Territories
Year: MSc2 / 2024
Type: Design Project
Tutor: Marc Schoonderbeek, Negar Sanaan Bensi, Stefan Gzyl
Description:
The Kiruna mine, the world’s largest iron ore mine, extends over 2000 meters underground, with daily blasts at 1:30 am shaping operations and altering the Loussavaara mountain. The design envisions restoring the mountain’s original form through abstraction when mining ceases. Underground tunnels are mirrored externally as floating pipes—air, water, and transport systems—supported by trusses sustaining a ventilation system that releases steam from the tunnels. This steam recreates the mountain’s ancient topography as a cloud. This raises the question: what will happen to the “invisible” infrastructure once mining ends?The proposal repurposes these underground spaces, leveraging their unique conditions as laboratories and archives for future biologies and organisms, transforming the site into a space for innovation.