Healing Mining Pits with Self-Sustaining Underground Skyscrapers
The earth is pocked with giant pits like scars, left behind by mining operations that take what they seek from the land and then leave the site in ruin. But what if we could use those gaping holes as the basis of new underground cities ? ‘Above Below’, a proposal for the 2011 eVolo Skyscraper Competition , gives one such mining pit a new life with a bustling underground skyscraper where a self-sufficient community can live, farm, work and play. This unusual inverted skyscraper design, by Matthew Fromboluti of Washington University in St. Louis, was created specifically for the massive Lavender Pit Mine outside of Bisbee, Arizona, which measures an astonishing 900 feet deep and 300 acres wide. Built around a ‘solar chimney’ that provides light and ventilation to the deepest reaches of the structure, ‘Above Below’ would be virtually undetectable on the surface, with a dome roof covered in native vegetation. The underground tower is entirely self-sustaining, with its own