Machine in Bloom: Industrial Park and Energy Timescapes within the Remnants of the Colstrip Power Plant

Abstract

The relics of the Colstrip coal-powered plant in eastern Montana remain as a mausoleum to the once sublime, a polemic of American westward expansion in the name of efficiency. Engagement with the landscape and retained infrastructure for residents and visitors is a tense involvement as one acknowledges the level of toxicity these forms of non-renewable energy contribute to human and environmental health while simultaneously appreciating the economic prosperity the plant provides. As polluted groundwater is cleaned through phytoremediation technologies, the power plant transitions to biomass, using the phyto-crops as the new primary source of energy. Over time these industrial practices and additions will be broken down or repurposed as energy futures shift and renewed ecologies take over. The thesis contributes to ongoing practices of landscape architecture as a transformative tool for sites of cultural heritage and ecological reclamation and how the discipline may advance the underlying social conversation of mending polluted environments by non-renewable energy industries that are currently being decommissioned around the world.