Cristina Terán Sanjuán

The Laciana Valley, north-west of Leon, is a landscape modified by human activity : the one of mining – the main activity of the valley since the beginning of the last century. There are obvious vestiges such as the impressive industrial complexes scattered in the valley or the scraps of coal waste scattered on the slopes. Others are not seen with the naked eye, such as underground mine shafts or huge open pit mines, which have razed the ridges of the mountains to extract the mineral. It is ultimately a landscape of coal.

The trace that is barely visible but that is latent in the memory of the territory is the railway that united all this productive system and that is now in disuse. The Valley of Laciana was crossed by two train lines that took all the production of coal to Villablino, where it was washed and it was taken to the Miner Siderurgical of Ponferrada by means of train known in the region as Ponfeblino. It is therefore understood that the valley functions as a linear structure supported by the train infrastructure, which sealed the entire system.

The project proposes to recover this disused territorial infrastructure and to change the old productive system through a network of knowledge and research that generates a new industry in the valley. The territory is articulated through the railway. This will be, on the one hand, support and transportation of the system of colonization of industrial sites, generating research nodes based on old industrial buildings. On the other hand, they will travel by the way of nomadic equipment that will serve the towns and they will stop in the exchange areas of the research centers. It is therefore a territory programmed through the train track, with nodes of density and variable and transferable uses.