Jinyun Quarries - The quarry as a stage

The mountainous landscape of Jinyun County in Zhejiang Province, China, has been shaped by the manual mining of natural stone. For the rugged and hard-to-access region, the Beijing architect Xu Tiantian and her team were asked to develop strategies for new uses for nine of the over 3000 small, abandoned quarries, which now provide a stage for cultural and social activities, and simultaneously strive for ecological improvements and create new economic perspectives for the rural population. The pits, provided with new functions, have become part of a public infrastructure that puts historical aspects extending back over a thousand years as well as the everyday culture heritage in a new context. The exhibition, which reached us from Beijing by the most sustainable means of transport possible, namely by train, communicates the breath-taking sense of space in the stone quarries of Jinyun in an large-scale installation. Spacious, translucent models, photos, plans, and films visualize the complex structure of the spaces carved into the rock.