.
The Nuclear Sanctuary investigates the dichotomous relationship between hope and fear of the French Nuclear industry. Combining the archive, tourism and folklore, the architectural proposal seeks to physicalise the complexity and magnitude of French nuclear culture, safeguarding its nuclear legacy. The project looks to re-articulate the nuclear story through architectural narrative, becoming a cognitive tool to speculate on how nuclear culture will be perceived in the future. Reactivating the decomissioned power plant Chooz A to stand as a monumental marker in time, the Nuclear Sanctuary presents a window into the future through the past, situated in the present.
_
"We nuclear people have created a Faustian Bargain with society"
- Avin M. Weinberg
.
THE FRENCH NUCLEAR COMPLEX
France is the most nuclear reliant nation in the world per capita, its state run nuclear programme is a glowing example of scientific mastery and has firmly become part of the national identity. Here described as The Nuclear State, France's nuclear legacy is one that flits between utopic ideas of modernity and dystopian fears of fallout. The strive for technological perfection and endless energy is contrasted by fears of destruction, exploitation and grave environmental degradation.
NUCLEAR TIME
France's Nuclear Legacy will long surpass our generations. In many cases high-level radioactive waste must remain safeguarded for 100,000 years. How do we as nuclear people start to engage with this notion of ‘nuclear time’ and how might design play a role in preserving its complex past for the future, whilst providing a position for critical reflection in the present?
NUCLEAR HERITAGE
As of 2020 Chooz A is the first power-plant to be fully decommissioned in France, thus raising the topic of nuclear heritage. The subterranean power plant, Chooz A holds remarkable spatial qualities, that reflect the audacity and power of the French Nuclear State. Housed inside a mountain - it is a power plant like no other... How might the industrial remnant not simply stand as a relic, but engage in a pluralised reading of its complex and controversial history?
CHOOZ NUCLEAR VILLAGE
Located 10km from the north-east Beligan border, Chooz is a remarkable nuclear landscape. Nestled within the Ardennes mountain range, the small town houses multiple nuclear sites and continues to be at the forefront of French nuclear modernity.
RE-ACTIVATING CHOOZ A
The project aims to re-activate the decomissioned power-plant through a narrative world, using architecture as a means of story-telling. Safeguarding the past and projecting Nuclear Culture into the future, Chooz A's caverns are re-interpreted as a journey through France's nuclear complex.
CONSTRUCTING NUCLEAR FOLKLORE
The decomissioned caverns of the Nuclear Sanctuary are here re-imagined, imbedding the complex story of Nuclear France within its walls. Invoking sacrality, the sanctuary looks to safeguard the story for future generations, establishing a nuclear folklore for all to engage with. Long used as means of passing down information, folkore is used in line with ideas of architectural narrative as a tool for cultural preservation. In so doing the heritage process invites the practice of hermeneutics, opening the site and France's nuclear legacy for continued interpretation and reading.
A NUCLEAR PILGRIMAGE
The Nuclear Sanctuary can be viewed as a pilgrimage, the experience is a journey into France's complex nuclear culture. To the pilgrim it is a figurative and literal descent into the history and future of the French nuclear story.
