Gabriela Sinclair
(she/her)
A LANDSCAPE IN MOURNING
Looking at the Lochaber Hydropower scheme, supplying power for the ALVANCE aluminium smelter in Fort William, and how the dystopian structures have impacted the Scottish Highlands landscape.
The industrialisation of the area will be shown through the sites of Laggan and Treig dam and the surrounding culture and history that were sacrificed for them.
The sites of the two dams are very different, but both have significant stories and histories lost; this observatory allows them to be given a voice again.
Laggan Dam has a vast amount of deforestation, where the soil conditions make it very difficult for regrowth. Resulting in acres of land left visibly scarred with lots of artificial plantations. Such as the clearing of trees, there was also a clearing of culture where a crofter’s cottage was left abandoned to decay during the time when the dam was being constructed.
Treig dams’ construction impacted the railway line and the natural course of the rivers, which were altered to fit the implementation. Two small villages at the South end of the dam (Lochtreighead and Creaguanich), once used for cattle farming and as markets, are partially or fully submerged due to the rise in water level at Treig reservoir.
With the impact of landscape being of a large scale from what the eye can see (deforestation, abandoned ruins) and to what it cannot see (oxygen level in water rising, submerged villages), there is an interesting contrast between symbolic and physical mourning.
The proposal of a single observatory just South of Tulloch, where the Spean and Treig rivers meet, creates a moment for the observer in the middle of the two sites where they can look out onto both and contemplate what once was.
Creating moments within the observatory will make it a more symbolic experience where the observer can connect with the immediate surrounding landscape, full of artificial plantations and near a sheepfold ruin and look out onto the buoy of the crofters’ cottage ruin and buoy at Treig dam to symbolise the villages.
With a consciousness of sustainability, the proposal will be made of as many locally sourced materials as possible- wood for cladding, floor boards, and recycled steel components can be found in scraps from the aluminium smelter and from dam parts that have had to be replaced, where the materiality can be stripped off and repurposed.
The observatory brings awareness to the unknown sacrifices humans have made in the Scottish Highlands to accommodate the dams.
