Quarry recovery and re-inventing the landscape

The recovery and re-use of abandoned stone quarries has been a subject of debate for many years involving architects, technicians, public administrations and entrepreneurs into methods and ideas for action to resolve the impact - at times traumatic - on the local area and the landscape caused by active stone quarries or those abandoned at the end of quarrying activity.
Yet this question also emerges in a preventive context when opening new quarries.
VeronaFiere has tackled the problem by including it several times in the cultural activities of Marmomacc.
Ten years after the most significant event (an exhibition and in-depth convention at the 35th Marmomacc in 2000), VeronaFiere resumes debate into this topic with an even broader horizon including more recent experiences on an international scale and new keys for interpretation offered by culture, technology and production.
Many studies and research projects have by now focused on this question in universities and the professional world, which have generated new and different interpretations of the landscape and its meaning. A series of exemplary projects by architects and landscape designers has also highlighted alternative possibilities for tackling the problem compared to standard practice. In fact, the most common and conventional method for quarry landscape recovery is based, where possible, on the concept of “morphological readjustment” of the land or “camouflage” of orographic damage through the use of specific techniques (terracing, planting of trees and bushes, camouflage with pigments, etc.) when re-composition is not feasible. New approaches, although still in the development stage, focus on including surface quarrying activity in a global process of landscape conversion through informed quarry design from beginning to end of exploitation. This concept embraces ecology and aesthetics and, alongside geologists and mining technicians, also involves professional figures such as architects, landscape designers, experts in botany, artists, etc., normally not called upon for this type of action.
An alternative way to tackle the recovery of abandoned quarrying sites is to "work on the wound", that is use the morphology of the territory altered by quarrying to create imaginative architectural spaces or unusual landscapes enhanced by new signs and meanings. In many cases, these "creative" recuperation projects, involving the design action of landscape architects and artists, seek to develop particularly significant places even in terms of public use - such as parks-museums, performance centres etc. - and are included in tourist and educational circuits and excursions. This research approach is at the heart of the exhibition at Marmomacc. The purpose of the initiative is, on the one hand, to survey and compare different trends and directions, ranging from the development of the "architectural" potential of quarries to land-art projects, and on the other to provide significant examples of "alternative" recuperation as a stimulus for a new design approach to local areas.