Acknowledging the inevitability of the demolition of the Redcar Steelworks Complex by 2022, this project addresses the paradox between the government’s idea of progress for new industries and the former workers’ and residents’ wishes to preserve their industrial landscape and heritage.

In reaction to the unique steel slag landscape at the South Gare and Coatham Sands from the Redcar coast, the project envisages a landscape archive and research centre where the industrial scars of the site are exhibited and archived, whereas research on the contaminated soil scape and phytoremediation will be carried out over a 50-year period.

Inspired by the idea of dialectical landscape – that is embracing the disorganised and chaotic landscape conditions – the design explores the idea of landscape casting and tilt-up construction both as ways of revealing the industrial scars of the contaminated site and as an opportunity for phytoremediating the polluted landscapes, thus responding to Redcar’s paradox of preserving industrial heritage and developing a green economy. The rich geological and material history of the post-industrial town is thus cast, embraced, and celebrated, in the new complex.