Thesis: Copper Americana, On the Ambitions of the Shed

✜✴

architecture &landscape

This thesis redirects the formal ambitions of the mining shed away from extraction and toward a civic architecture for thermal delight. Despite the shed’s emergence as part of the mechanism of industrialization, within its language we can read the latent ambitions for cultural significance and atmospheric regulation. A new proposed civic typology prioritizes shade and elevated ground to create better spaces of collectivity for mining town residents. Using Miami, Arizona, as a case study, this new model addresses how to build spatial autonomy in desert mining towns. In so doing, this project answers questions about how to build for aridity, flood resilience, and difficult entanglements with ground.