Oil and Leisure: Narrative Landforms for Curaçao

Abstract

‘Like Oil and Leisure’ is a reimagining of Curaçao’s central harbor and beating heart, Schottegat. This port is home to the now-retired Refinery Isla, leaving an enormous economic and social gap that the refinery has filled for over a century. This landscape is a living memory of the past 500 years of human occupation. From the horrors of the colonial slave trade to safe haven for persecuted Sephardi Jews, economic boom to ecological disaster, these shores bear the scars of a complex history. Using the narrative arc of a round of golf, this thesis explores the stories embedded in the lands of the former oil refinery through a reshaping of its material grounds. Visitors. navigate nine sites around the harbor that compose the course, immersed in different elements of the island’s history. Tourists and locals alike engage with the legacies of Schottegat and imagine the site’s next five centuries.