MLA A Nomadic Landscape for Future Archaeology and Post-Industrial Healing

CATALOG

CHAPTER 01. An archaeologist's journal

A sensory excavation through landscape history, tracing memory with each step.

CHAPTER 02.

Weaving Memory and Matter: Site Strategies

Strategies woven through walking, sensing, and rebuilding—reactivating the post-industrial site through embodied design.

CHAPTER 03.

Projected Grounds: Design Outcomes Across Time and Emotion

Designs unfolding through masterplans, material systems, and sensory experiences—mapping emotion across time.

CHAPTER 04. Nomadic Workbook & References

Sketches, material tests, process mapping, and theoretical references—tracing the making of a nomadic landscape.

CHAPTER 1

One Future Nomadic Archaeologist’s Diary, Year 2075

What Is Nomadism in Landscape Design?

Traditionally, nomadism emerged as a human adaptation to the arid grasslands, where communities developed a mobile lifestyle characterized by horseback herding and seasonal migration in pursuit of water and pasture.

Over time, the concept of nomadism transcended its original socio-economic context, evolving into a philosophical framework for understanding space, identity, and movement. French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, alongside Félix Guattari, introduced the notion of "nomadic thought," emphasizing decentralization, fluidity, and deterritorialization. They contrasted "smooth space": open, continuous, and dynamic, with "striated space," which is structured, hierarchical, and fixed.

In contemporary landscape architecture, the principles of nomadism have been reinterpreted as a design strategy that prioritizes temporal experiences, decentralized engagement, and embodied perception.

Moving away from rigid zoning and static functions, nomadic landscapes invite users to traverse, sense, and adapt to their surroundings.

Such designs embrace unfinishedness, cyclical rhythms, and the evolving relationship between people and land, reflecting a shift towards flexibility and sustainability in addressing the challenges of modern society.

Rather than imposing fixed functions or rigid zoning, a nomadic landscape invites people to walk, sense, and adapt. It values unfinishedness, cyclical rhythms, and the fluid ways we relate to land over time.

Nomadism in My Landscape Practice

As a landscape designer, I understand nomadism not merely as movement across space, but as a way of thinking—an approach rooted in decentralization, slowness, and bodily presence. Nomadism, to me, means designing with fluidity over fixation, experience over form, and temporal rhythms over static boundaries.

Rather than organizing space through rigid zones, I see nomadism as a method of unfolding meaning through walking, sensing, and encountering—where the land is not mastered, but slowly read.

In this project, I translate this idea into three spatial strategies:

1 using walking to stitch memory across fragmented ground,

2 enabling sensory immersion as a design tool,

3 and reactivating post-industrial ruins through adaptive reuse and participation.

Here, nomadism becomes more than theory—it becomes a way to rebalance spatial inequality, reframe lost ecologies, and invite renewed belonging on a land once dominated by extraction.

Project description

In the context of accelerating industrial withdrawal and ecological vulnerability in north sea Scottish Highlands, the Nigg Peninsula presents a landscape of deep contradiction.

Once a booming oil-processing port, the region became a heavy industrial zone: leaving behind rigid infrastructure, spatial inequality, and fractured ecologies.

Development concentrated in nearby towns like Invergordon, while Nigg transformed into a shell of extractive ambition, burdened with rust, abandonment, and disconnection.

Now caught between industry and erosion, memory and renewal, the peninsula exists in a state of post-industrial dormancy , it holds the potential for transformation.

This project proposes a speculative future for Nigg as a Nomadic Archaeological Park By incorporating a 'nomadic approach', the design encourages visitors to explore and share this coast of industrial and natural memories with its inhabitants, activating a deep connection between local identity and the tourist experience.

Through material preservation, ecological repair and sensory reprogramming, it reframes the residual landscape as an active terrain of memory, participation, and healing.

This design adopts a narrative structure centered on a future traveler in 2075, unfolding through his diary entries that record personal discoveries and reflections, thereby immersing the audience in a speculative exploration of landscape and identity.

Linkage to Upper-Level Strategies

In terms of site composition, Nigg Energy Park is dominated by heavy industrial land with large assembly platforms, wharves, warehousing areas and technical plants, while the side close to the coastline is relatively open and marginal, at the junction of the industrial area and the marine ecology. This area has a certain degree of spatial flexibility and ecological restoration potential, and is one of the areas with the lowest intensity of current heavy industry but the highest flexibility for future transformation. Site Plan

The selection of the edge of the Nigg Energy Park on the seaward side as the experimental site for the 'Nomadic Archaeological Park' is a response to the contradictions and possibilities of industrial regeneration, coastal ecological restoration, and the reconstruction of social perceptions.

This area is located in the transition zone between industry and nature, and is an "in-between place" where policy gaps and spatial flexibility are intertwined, so it has the necessity and possibility of experimental design.

The Nigg area has a diverse range of ecological habitats: mudflats and saltmarsh are important stopover sites for wintering migratory birds (e.g. wigeons); wet grassland provides breeding habitat for birds (e.g. redshanks); and lowland woodland and scrubland support small mammals and insects; marine mammals (e.g., bottlenose dolphins, grey seals, and harbour seals).

CHAPTER 2

Weaving Memory and Matter: Site DESIGN Strategies

After analysing the demographic and historical context of the Cromarty Firth area in Chapter 1, it is clear that there is an uneven pattern of regional development: urban areas continue to grow in population due to their accessibility and infrastructure, whilst Nigg face challenges such as declining land-use and weakening of the community's function. At the same time, climate change and sea level rise will further exacerbate the vulnerability of coastal settlements, making the spatial reality of ‘migration’ an inevitable theme for the future.

In the face of this trend of mobility in the use of space and the distribution of people, this project attempts to break away from the traditional centralised landscape interventions, and introduces ‘nomadism’ as a design strategy and mode of perception, in order to respond to the multiple demands of local reconfiguration, ecological restoration, and social reconnection in the face of spatial uncertainty.

Traditional tourism in Scotland often follows a fixed model—visitors move between iconic sites in a linear, checklist-like manner, overlooking the richness of the in-between landscapes and communities.

Inspired by Scotland’s culture of campervan journeys, Bothy shelters, and off-grid exploration, nomadism here represents a way of sensing, connecting, and reactivating place through slow, adaptive, and immersive travel.

Nomadic emotional analysis throughout history

Existing plan 2025 1:5000

The Nigg energy park, primarily responsible for shipping large energy cargoes; a docking point for oil rig recovery. This area is now the main town and business district of Nig.There's also the main ferry crossing to Cromarty, which is a thriving area, and the end of the bus station.

This is a beach on the coast, where people walk their dogs every day, with a long coastline and some seaweed washed up in the intertidal zone along the coast.

Existing section 2025 1:5000

The area is mountainous and rugged.To the south, the cliffs and the sea form caves.

The area owns remnants of houses and batteries from the Second World War.This area is the highest point of the terrain. It overlooks the entire Nigg area and the cromarty firth.

Proposed plan 2100 1:5000

Nigg stone ResearchDesign element extraction

The design language draws directly from local Celtic and Pictish symbols, particularly the recurring motifs found on the Nigg Stone.

These include interwoven lines, spirals, and geometric patterns that express continuity, interconnection, and sacred balance.

Inspired by these forms, my project incorporates repeated curved elements, circular configurations, and structured geometries such as equilateral triangles. These motifs are embedded into paths, spatial layouts, and surfaces to evoke a sense of rootedness, rhythm, and cultural resonance within the landscape.

Projections of future sea level rise

2025: Without human intervention, the Energy Park is located on the eastern side of the Neag area.During this period, sea levels may begin to rise, but most of the facilities are still located in the higher ground area and may not have a significant impact on plant and facility operations.

2070: All infrastructure and wind energy construction plants have been relocated inland, former plants and facilities on the coast have been decommissioned and are in ruins, there are still some abandoned facilities on the ground, and the sea has inundated most of the coastal area.

2050: Sea levels have risen enough to affect half of the factories in the region and much of the infrastructure is beginning to be inundated by the sea.At this stage it is necessary to start thinking about inland expansion or flood defence measures, but these have not yet been planned for.The rise in water level clearly affects the normal functioning of the energy park and major environmental changes begin to occur.

2100: in the face of increasing sea level rise, my design proposes a series of floating islands that extend out to sea and grow through the reuse of used equipment and industrial plants. Capable of gradually increasing in size over time.

CHAPTER 3

Projected Grounds: Design Outcomes Across Time and Emotion

World War II Battery Ruins memorial bridge

Detailed design site 1

The World War II Battery memorial bridge is designed as an emotional journey—one that invites visitors to physically and psychologically experience the weight of the post-industrial labor era.

Inspired by the constrained, repetitive conditions of wartime industry and offshore oil labor the bridge takes on a compressed, folded form, echoing both pressure and perseverance.

Its structure is constructed from repurposed components of a decommissioned oil rig, embedding the memory of the region’s industrial past into the bridge’s very body. Spanning between two commemorative points, the bridge offers both a panoramic view of the Cromarty Firth and a contemplative passage that connects collective memory with lived landscape.

My design uses flowing water to guide visitors both visually and emotionally.

A gently sloping bridge leads to a still pool, symbolizing memory and reflection.

As the path continues, water becomes a narrative thread, drawing people deeper into a space where history and ecology meet.

At the end, a powerful waterfall marks the climax—serving as both a moment of remembrance and a striking reminder.

Site 2 regenerative lab strip

Detailed design

Floating Island Design Renderings

Floating Island Design Renderings In

CHAPTER 4

For this exercise, used the effect of a film reel to observe the narrative sensations of the site.

The main objective is to make people feel the presence and the topography of the site, as well as the contrasts and differences between the categories of landscape elements.

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For each design, prefer to take a blank piece of paper and draw what I'm thinking about

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