Michael Holland Y5
A Peat Protopia Peatlands cover approximately 3 million hectares of the UK landscape (12% of the total land area). Within their soils is stored some 3000 million tonnes of carbon—as much as 20 times the UK’s entire forest biomass. Despite their significance, the peatland landscapes of the Peak District are among the most heavily damaged. Years of industrial pollution have rained acid on the land, raising the soil PH to levels in which nothing can survive. Elsewhere the landscape is systematically burnt, overgrazed with livestock, and heavily drained of water, inadvertently releasing stored carbon back into the atmosphere and denuding the landscape of vegetation in the process, leading to catastrophic soil erosion. The Peat Protopia is a research and restoration facility dedicated to furthering our understanding of peat, peatland habitats, and their place as carbon capturing devices and sites of significant ecological importance. Sited in Buckton Vale quarry on the edge of Saddleworth Moor the proposal demonstrates the power of peat through an architecture in constant conversation with landscape. Acting as a mechanical mediator the building systematically shifts physical material through a cyclical process of saturation, while continually questioning wider discussions of land management, land ownership and rewilding.
