Transcendent Site: The Resurrection of Denniston

<p>This thesis is a design-led investigation into how the proposed ‘Escarpment Mine Project’ could commemorate the history of the Denniston Plateau while at the same time, moving into the 21st century. The isolated ghost town, Denniston, is used as a means for building upon historic innovation, creating new opportunities for architecture. The resurrected township is based upon three design themes: resisting Dystopia, a call for eccentric creation, and repurposing the past. Each theme emerged as a response to macro and micro site analysis. The project investigates the fate of our cities in the future, and questions the role of architectural design in this setting. Inspired by Ecotopias, the new township is completely self-sufficient, and sustainable economic opportunities are created in anticipation of the inevitable decline of the ‘Escarpment Mine’. The project pushes the boundaries, constraints and perceptions of architectural fantasy. The resurrected township goes beyond accepted building norms, establishing itself as a township rich in identity and imaginative spirit. The proposal repurposes the past to create an evolutionary architecture specific to Denniston. The new township adds another layer of history to the currently stalled site condition. The development enables future generations to experience the history of site through its architectural evolution. The Denniston township is a positive contribution to the West Coast. The new township mediates with the past towards future ideals, manifesting itself in imaginative, unconventional architecture</p>

Transcendent Site: The Resurrection of Denniston

<p>This thesis is a design-led investigation into how the proposed ‘Escarpment Mine Project’ could commemorate the history of the Denniston Plateau while at the same time, moving into the 21st century. The isolated ghost town, Denniston, is used as a means for building upon historic innovation, creating new opportunities for architecture. The resurrected township is based upon three design themes: resisting Dystopia, a call for eccentric creation, and repurposing the past. Each theme emerged as a response to macro and micro site analysis. The project investigates the fate of our cities in the future, and questions the role of architectural design in this setting. Inspired by Ecotopias, the new township is completely self-sufficient, and sustainable economic opportunities are created in anticipation of the inevitable decline of the ‘Escarpment Mine’. The project pushes the boundaries, constraints and perceptions of architectural fantasy. The resurrected township goes beyond accepted building norms, establishing itself as a township rich in identity and imaginative spirit. The proposal repurposes the past to create an evolutionary architecture specific to Denniston. The new township adds another layer of history to the currently stalled site condition. The development enables future generations to experience the history of site through its architectural evolution. The Denniston township is a positive contribution to the West Coast. The new township mediates with the past towards future ideals, manifesting itself in imaginative, unconventional architecture</p>

Lockdown in a disneyfied city: Kraków Old Town and the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic

This paper presents the geography of the historic central district of Kraków, Poland before, during and after the first wave of the 2020 pandemic. It describes how the disneyfied main part of the UNESCO heritage site of universal values turned into a ghost town as functional changes were turning into physical ones amid restrictions. From the results of pre-pandemic processes (that, as we argue, turned the city into its disneyfied version), to the lockdown (that later revealed itself to be but the first one in a row), to the post-lockdown recovery, these changes are presented in modified figure-ground diagrams with accessibility being defined by both tangible and intangible properties. The results are set against the background of the city’s current policies regarding economic recovery, mobility and accessibility to urban green areas. As an attempt to address the present vulnerability of the once resilient historic city centres—of which Kraków Old Town is a luminous example—this paper tends to be a voice in the debate on the post-2020 planning and the strategies we will need to face the subsequent waves of this, or other, pandemics as well as consequences of climate change.

“With All The Ghosts that Haunt the Park...”: Haunted Recreation in Brent (Ontario)

When I first visited Brent, the defunct logging village, now campgrounds in the northern reaches of Algonquin Provincial Park I went searching for ghost stories. Often described as a “ghost town,” Brent has been occupied since the earliest days of logging in the Ottawa River/Kiji Sibi Valley and holds an important place in the oral history of the Park. The village was a place where many died after violent accidents during the timber rush of the eighteen-hundreds, where Algonquin Anishinaabe Peoples had camped and likely held a village of their own prior to colonization. Brent was once a bustling community, the former site of the Kish-Kaduk Lodge and an important railway stopover during the First World War. Further, Brent was home to the last year round resident of the Park. Mr. Adam Pitts, known to many local cottagers as the “Mayor” passed away in his home in 1998 one year after the railroad tracks were removed by the Canadian National Railway Company and the electricity was shut off. Now his cottage is a ruin some claim to be haunted by the Mayor’s restless ghost. And there are other ghost stories I heard in Brent that haunt the edges of the colonial imagination, stalking unwary travellers as they meander through what they sometimes assume to be “pristine wilderness.” Common patterns of self-apprehension and identity formation associated with tourism and heritage management in Algonquin Park are imbued with nationalist value through a prismatic complex of cultural appropriation, the denial of complicity in colonial violence, and the contingent obfuscation of Indigenous presence and persistence in the area, a process I call haunted recreation. Countering this complex is critical for working past the historical and intergenerational trauma associated with Canadian settler-colonialism and the contemporary inequities of Canadian society.

After the Contagion. Ghost City Centres: Closed “Smart” or Open Greener?

This paper has three main objectives. It traces the “closed” urban model of city development, critiques it at length, showing how it has led to an unsustainable dead-end, represented in post-Covid-19 “ghost town” status for many central cities, and proposes a new “open” model of city design. This is avowedly an unsegregated and non-segmented utilisation of now often abandoned city-centre space in “open” forms favouring urban prairie, or more formalised urban parklands, interspersed with so-called “agritecture” in redundant high-rise buildings, shopping malls and parking lots. It favours sustainable theme-park models of family entertainment “experiences” all supported by sustainable hospitality, integrated mixed land uses and sustainable transportation. Consideration is given to likely financial resource issues but the dearth of current commercial investment opportunities from the old carbonised urban model, alongside public policy and consumer support for urban greening, are concluded to form a propitious post-coronavirus context for furthering the vision.

Od znikania do odpominania

From Disappearance to Re-Remembrance. Post-Memory Narration about Miedzianka Miedzianka – a lower Silesian village, earlier: mining town and a leisure-tourist resort, ger. Kupferberg. It is said that it is a ghost-town, which has (almost) diaappeared. Some traces, however, remained – a church, photography or human memories – both from before World War II, of German citizens and after the world war of polish inhabitants. All of them are connected by the traumatic experience that combines post-war resettlement and the destruction of the town. The memory of Miedzianka was not destroyed, though, being passed to next generations. One of the voices of this post-memory can be found in the report by Filip Springer, Miedzianka: Story of Disappearing in 2011. This book quickly became recognised ensuing an increasing interest in the town, its history and fate, making new post-memory narrations to appear, which I describe as „post-memory practice”. One of them is Miasto, którego nie było (The City, which didn’t exist). What and how do these books tell us about Miedzianka? In what sense do these alternative but interpenetrating narrations influence the perception of this place, as well as the memory of it? These questions are the basis of the reflections leading to a display of relations between man and his oblivion/memory and the place. The literature, however, or widely art, having the power to preserve memory and therefore to save, allows the showcasing of the transformation of the town: its history, disappearance, and finally transubstantiation into a place of memory, which is created mainly by the second and third generations – heritage depositories.

The Hauntings and Heart of a Place

This autoethnographic research presents personal stories from the author, connecting family, land, and music. He recounts stories his Ojibwe grandmother shared about her time in Franz, a small railroad village in northeastern Ontario that is now a ghost town. The connection to Franz is established through memories from his grandmother. Inspired to write a song, the author aimed to reconnect to Franz itself. The study follows the author's personal journey to visit his grandmother's land for the first time, making new connections and stories along the way. The research utilizes Indigenous autoethnography, Indigenous storytelling, and arts-based methods, such as a/r/tography, to link his stories to those of his grandmother, resulting in a reflection of storytelling, community history, and (re)connection to land, woven together by stories from the family matriarch.