Set in the context of the deconstruction of Port Talbot’s blast furnaces, the project responds to the polluted soil that now sits where steelworks once did and the vast quantity of contaminated demolition waste being created as the towns industrial heart is dismantled. Tracing these pollutants through the growth of plants, the project proposes using willow trees as pollution extractors and landscape stabilisation. Combining their timber with rusting steel and fragments of machinery, the project proposes a material system for redundant steelworkers to re-inhabit the site of their old works and create premises for the many new businesses started since the closure - many of which currently operate out of temporary sites.

To facilitate this self-build programme, a spine building sits at the centre of the project, hosting facilities to prepare material, govern the site and record its legacy. In doing so, the project aims to decontaminate the site and replace industrial loss with agency for Port Talbot’s community. A community that can, through the combination of industrial traces and a remade landscape, find common in the soil.