Reactivating abandoned quarries. “The Quarry as Stage” by DnA_Design and Architecture

           In 2021, the Beijing architect Xu Tiantian and her firm DnA_Design and Architecture were awarded a commission to develop new utilization concepts for the old and today abandoned stone quarries in the northern part of Jinyun County in Zhejiang Province. Located in direct proximity to Songyang, where Xu Tiantian has already very successfully realized revitalization projects for the rural area, which have received close international attention, are over 3000 disused small stone quarries that, until recently, were still mined manually.

The nine stone quarries that have been worked on by Xu Tiantian and her team since then are located in a valley named Xiandu with an impressive natural landscape and bizarre volcanic rock formations that are already a tourist attraction today.

To support the development of the region with the measures, the project strives for ecological improvements, while simultaneously creating social and cultural locations to be used by both the local population and visitors. The converted stone quarries that have been given a new use are part of a public infrastructure that puts historical aspects going back over a thousand years as well as the everyday cultural heritage in a new context.

The Transformation of the Quarry Landscape of Jinyun

The landscape of steep mountains and narrow valleys in Jinyun County today was shaped by the small-scale exploitation of local stone quarries that were in operation for decades and thus led to consider interventions in the natural landscape. With the Xiandu Scenic Area, the region already attracts many tourists today. The temple for the legendary Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), who has already been honoured for over 3000 years as the founder of the Chinese nation, has an impact far beyond the region. According to the legend, he ascended the local Dinghu Mountain into the heavens on a dragon after achieving immortality. The temple, which was destroyed in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), was reconstructed in 1994 and has regularly been used since then for commemoration ceremonies, and was admitted to the National List of Immaterial Cultural Heritage in 2011. Moreover, in natural and artificially created caves, there are 125 important stone calligraphies, the oldest of which comes from the Tang dynasty (617–907), which have been listed as a national cultural heritage since 2001.

Jinyun County is located in the southern centre of Zhejiang Province. Nearly 80 per cent of the region is covered by forest, thus making agricultural production on the rocky substrate difficult due to the scarcity of fertile soil. The inhabitants, therefore, relied on the hard profession of the stonemason, and until recently carved the material from the rock face manually. In the region, the massive stone blocks were used for the construction of houses, whose height was, however, limited by the heavyweight of the material. The stone quarries have now been abandoned for some years, are used in part for chicken farming and in part as fish ponds, or have fallen into disrepair.

Due to the ongoing transformation of society and the socioeconomic challenges, as well as the need for new perspectives to counter the exodus from rural regions, the administration is seeking new possibilities for dealing with the remainders of the archaic mining industry on the one hand, and new sources of income for the population on the other. In addition, the stone quarries today gape like wounds in the natural landscape and urgently require ecological improvements.

The Projects

The exhibition presents all of the nine former stone quarries that have already been completed for new utilizations as well as those in planning. The individual locations are each characterized by very individual and random forms cut into the rock and are connected by a footpath that is routed over stairways due to the differences in elevation. The stone quarries are situated within a radius of one kilometre and contribute as a pilot project to revitalizing the landscape and the region by means of the smallest-scale interventions possible. The simple, very careful interventions by the architect contrast with the ‘over-designing’ of rural areas, in the sense of kitschy romanticizing or ‘Disneyfication’, which has become common in many places in China.

New Uses for the Quarries

Some of the immense—often cathedral-like—spaces in the rock face, which was created by chance when the stone was quarried and are up to thirty-eight metres high, have good acoustics and are thus suitable for performances of traditional Wu opera or as spaces for presentations. At another station, former stonemasons demonstrate the quarrying of stone in live presentations. There are also huge stone chambers that are used as a teahouse or platforms from which visitors can observe the sunset through a spectacular hole in the rock face.

The nine stone quarries are connected with one another via a valley with a small village. An information centre with a stone quarry park with water surfaces, in which visitors will be given insights into history, flora, and fauna, is being planned there. Besides new locations for social and cultural infrastructure, possibilities for economic development, for instance, a restaurant for catering to guests and an education centre for processing natural stones are also being created.

With their interventions, the architects are transforming the relicts of a landscape shaped by a work culture of hard physical labour into a symbol of the economic and cultural transformation in the rural area, which also contributes to socio-economic and ecological improvements. The spatial experience in the amorphous caverns, dramatic natural illumination, and acoustics offer an experience that is not possible in such a way in the normal day-to-day life of rural and urban populations. Embedded in the natural and cultural landscape of past centuries, a necessary measure is combined with a contemporary world of experience that brings together the different expectations and possibilities.