The island of Hashima currently hosts a concrete labyrinth of multiple-storey abandoned apartment houses and forgotten mining structures that are beginning to be over run by nature.
The small size of the island means that a transformation can be performed with relative ease.
Our proposal is to cover the island with a green layer.
The layer could be a composite of green nature and other green man-made materials.
By transforming the entire island into a green field, the boundary between the man-made and the purely natural is lost.
The green colour will act as a camouflage between the different natural and man-made elements.
By failing to classify trees, bushes and valleys as “natural” and buildings, bridges and staircases as “man-made”, a new perspective is gained.
By blurring this distinction and treating everything as a single environment, new possibilities become apparent.
Various habitats such as valleys and caves start to appear within this new environment, and opportunities for the emergence of new habitats can be created.

What was once considered an uninhabitable environment could thus become a playground suitable for particular species of plants and animals. A “new nature” emerges, a world between new and old, city and forest, opaque and transparent, man-made and natural.

SAN ROCCO・ISLANDS
#1 Wnter 2011
http://www.sanrocco.info