Turbine Towns
Infrastructure Space seeks to find the latent possibilities inherent in things that already exist and to ask how these can be used in the service of society. The atelier is concerned with the productive capacity of existing infrastructure and the combination of systems into new infrastructure.
Turbine Towns is a critical response to the UK’s Levelling Up strategy. The project uses the post-industrial town of Cleator Moor in West Cumbria as a pilot scheme, speculating how the existing £42.5 million of Levelling Up funding could be re-invested into a proposal that facilitates greater long-term sustainable growth.
Drawing on the regions existing energy network and exposed coastline, the project proposes the construction of a community-owned wind farm that will produce a £100.7 million community investment fund, as well as highly subsidized electricity for local households.
The project develops into exploring an infrastructural masterplan that supports the sustainable expenditure of this investment fund. This masterplan revolves around a series of pavilions which serve as locations for debating and voting, as well as places of reflection and learning. Crucially the project aims to emphasise the temporality of industry, and therefore it creates a system that can adapt and flourish after the wind-farms obsolescence.
