Lavender Pit Imagined as Enclosed Mega-Building

Lots of imaginative ideas have been floated for Bisbee’s Lavender Pit, from making it a (toxic) lake reservoir, filling it back in with reclaimed dumps, and now enclosing it into a futuristic ‘inverted skyscraper.’

From Evolo:

“Matthew Fromboluti of Washington University in St. Louis thinks so, and has designed a skyscraper that seeks not only to hold a veritable society worth of people and uses, but simultaneously heals the scarred landscape of the desert outside of Bisbee, Arizona. His project, titled “Above Below,” proposes the infill of a 900-foot deep and nearly 300-acre wide crater left by the former Lavender Pit Mine with a structure that will hold living and working areas, and green space for farming and recreation….”

The odds of this ever becoming a reality are very distant. Bisbee is a hundred miles from economic viability, the Lavender Pit is still an active mine, Freeport-McMoRan would own this experimental real estate, and they would be the de facto landlords.

The terraced sides are unstable, the soil is toxic and sump pumps would have to manage seepage.

But its a cool idea and I love the pictures.