Lithium mediates our access to places, energy, data, and more. Lithium’s ubiquity takes shape in batteries—large and small, high and low performance, new and recycled. Lithium-ion batteries with aluminum, cobalt, iron, manganese, nickel, or titanium provide energy storage in electric mobility and renewable energy systems. And all this matters because accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to green energy is central to climate action and the planet’s future. Science tells us that greenhouse gas emissions need to reach net zero by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Time is ticking, and we can already feel the effects of inaction.
Globally, the race for self sufficiency and secure access to Lithium is redrawing a new global geopolitical chessboard. The rising demand for green energy technologies is driving international competition to secure the means of lithium extraction, production, and distribution. To keep up with ever-increasing consumption demands, governments across the world are declaring lithium a matter of national security and aiming to control every step in the supply chain. This means more extraction, more manufacturing, more distribution, more consumption, and more waste recycling, one country at a time. And with this comes the fast production and reproduction of an assortment of industrial and infrastructural types (the mining site, the industrial park, the gigafactory, the solar megafarm, the smart highway, the transcontinental sea routes, the charging station, and more), rapidly urbanizing the boundless territory and the lifestyles of those inhabiting it with a calculated banality. Habitat loss and fragmentation, land and water dispossession, waste and legacy pollution, and forced displacement come next. In the US too, Lithium has been identified as a material essential to the economic and national security. To accelerate capacity building and incentivise private investment, the Biden-Harris Administration is stewarding a multi-billion-dollar effort through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
What is at stake for us as architects, urban designers, and global citizens in this seemingly inevitable future? How can we cultivate the imagination of other possible futures and challenge the current path to planetary devastation with a sense of possibility and radical optimism? Can competition and nationalistic approaches accelerate climate action at a planetary scale, or could lithium spark a new paradigm, harnessing global coalitions and transcontinental alliances? How can we help image the way toward a just, green energy transition centered on serving the rights of nature and the needs of the most vulnerable first?
This MArch and MUD interdisciplinary studio invites students to take climate action by investigating the lithium urban[i]ties powering the just, green energy transition. The semester will include three components: (1) an atlas of operative lithium territories incorporating the global flows and urban and architectural types inhabiting them; (2) a booklet of case studies informing design strategies; and (3) individual/team design proposals. Final proposals address any/all stages in the lithium life cycle—from the design implications of new mining technologies and the strategies for their decommissioning and renaturalization, to more experimental approaches to manufacturing and the visibility of labor practices, to the deployment of multi-program charging stations, to solar farms and wind farms as stewards of biodiversity, to advocacy and policy frameworks and organizational tactics. Together, we will critically advance our disciplinary and professional contributions to address climate change action’s spatial and socioenvironmental implications. The studio will participate in a three-part lithium symposium with UVA School of Architecture and Universidad Pontificia de Chile, Escuela de Arquitectura. We will also plan an experiential learning component to experience and document the socio-spatial transformations driven by the lithium rush in the landscapes of Nevada and the Lithium Valley.
Atlas: Lithium Material Flows
Valley Salton Sea [California]
Valley Salton Sea [California]
GEOGRAPHIES OF IMPERMANENCE investigate notions of environmental consciousness and climate injustice, while addressing the entanglements between extraction, consumption, technology, and disparate temporalities.
Migra-Topia: Transient Urbanisms in a time of Hyperconsumption
Ahmed Noeman
This project serves as a critique of hyperconsumption and its implications on climate injustice through anticipated climate migration and environmental decimation.
Li-horizon: The Nomadic Module Habitation Tower
Becky Liu
Li-horizon investigates a new type of mobile, short-term live-work cell for contemporary mining explorations.
Zhicheng Liu
This project traces a guided transformation reshaping Silver Peak Town into a sustainable and ecologically conscious landscape, blending technological efficiencies with the unique vernaculars of place.
Migra-Topia: Transient Urbanisms
Ahmed Noeman
2050.
Decades of hyperconsumption and technological determinism have failed to deliver on the promise of prosperity. Government after government, federal bills aimed to facilitate the just energy transition all but accelerated climate change. Green mobility, green energy, and green lives have all been predicated on more consumption, more extraction, and more manufacturing to always deliver the latest technology at whatever cost.
Today, the promised green energy transition is in full swing. The world is hyperconnected and media propaganda tells us everything is fine. But everything may not be fine after all. Dense coastal regions submerged under the rising seas, vast arid territories devoid of life, and now highly visible migrations signal a shift. The bread basket of the US Pacific Southwest has been disbanded, water depleted, wildlife has gone extinct, and extreme weather ravages the territory.
Now climate migrants in search of work, thousands of former agricultural workers make their way North through the mineral-rich Nevada landscape. Offering cheap labor in abundance, Silver Peak witnesses a mining boom unlike anything seen before. This time is different, they say. This time extraction is to save the planet from its own greed. Thus, Nevada’s Lithium flows, people come and go, and the boom town is always in the making. Permanence and accumulation are only possible for a few. For the rest, life is always on the move, transient and uncertain, like climate. Green, elusive.
in a Time of Hyperconsumption
Li-Horizon:The Nomadic Modular
Becky Liu
Due to the increasing demand for lithium to address the Climate Crisis, countries are exploring lithium presence in their own territories. In the hands of global mining corporations, new lithium prospects and expansion of existing mines are happening everywhere where lithium reserves are a possibility. A mix of public funding and private capital enables the deployment of small teams of professional and expensive machines that operate in a fast, precise, and nimble manner. They move fast, jobs are well paid, and require specific training to serve sophisticated automated processes with tight schedules and demanding results to the corporation shareholders. Contrary to the promise of local jobs and community investments, the only commitment mining companies share is one of efficient resource extraction and shareholder profits. Far are the times of company towns and community building, the only horizon is the increased return.
Li-horizon offers a new type of mobile habitation for mining exploration teams in barren lands. The system is conceptualized for easy and incremental deployment, optimizing systems, and reducing the footprint and local interaction of the team with hosting communities. Time has come to test the system at Silver Peak, the exclusive source of lithium in the U.S., Silver Peak Valley is poised to become the key national hub of Lithium Extraction. Li-horizon is located there. The nomadic structures provide a flexible and adaptive living environment for the exploration team, allowing swift reconfiguration and relocation, aligning with the fast-paced demands of exploration. It also prioritizes the minimization of damage to land resources, ensuring that exploration activities have minimal long-term impact on the natural surroundings. Beyond this, these small, unintended markers become utility towers and nests for mining activities and wildlife alive.
Habitation Tower
Lithi-Morphic
Leo
This project investigates the process of ecosystem restoration after the mines are decommissioned. While the site will never return to its former state after lithium extraction happen, the remediation of soil and careful reintroduction of wildlife can be choreographed. Incremental as the process of mining decommissioning that guides the exit of the companies, Lithi-Morphic aims to shape the processes that to turn waste into compost, accelerating the process of restoration.
This initiative involves a carefully orchestrated metamorphosis aimed at transforming the Silver Peak mine into a sustainable and environmentally conscious terrain. It seamlessly integrates technological advancements with the distinct characteristics of the location. The project envisions implementing these changes at the designated post-mine site of Silver Peak in the future. The approach involves employing specialized robots designed to transport contaminated tailings and prepare the soil composition, and a series of infrastructures such as silo, water tower, and robot chargers station that are implemented with energy transition designs. This innovative method is intended to facilitate the restoration of the mine site to its original condition, ultimately contributing to the revitalization of local wildlife habitats.
CULTURES OF EXTRACTION looks at mining [hi]stories and cultures, their legacy in the territory and the ways in which local and indigenous communities may engage in developing alternative future imaginaries.
Mining Memories, Honoring Land
Kopal Tandon
This counter memorial contends with the struggles of indigenous people to honor Thacker Pass, the largest lithium reservoir in the US, as a significant site in their ancestral lands.
Future
Memories,
Jiayin Tian
Edge of Mine
The project explores the inheritance of mining culture in the process of green energy transition, and reactivates the vitality of historic neighborhoods by establishing a new energy tourism culture, integrating people from different backgrounds
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Iliya Mela
Through a travel itinerary that explores Nevada’s sublime mining cultural landscapes, the project gives visibility to the many side stories around labor struggles, land and water pollution, and erasure that have been left outside local narratives of place.
Mining Memories, Honoring Land
Kopal Tandon
This project tells the story of land and power, and the ongoing global struggle of Indigenous Peoples to protect their sacred homelands, culture, and livelihoods. To do so, it redirects the lens away from opportunistic government narratives placing lithium mining as a matter of national security and savior to a greener future. As indigenous people teach us, “There is no justice in the mineral extraction for the energy transition as it will destroy ecosystems instead of protecting them for future generations.” Yet, the Mining Act of 1872 and the Mining and Mineral Policy of 1970 provide legal protection that corporations and the federal government necessitate to argue otherwise. Land being viewed as a resource inherently challenges Indigenous populations’ view of it, one of cultural, religious, and ceremony that is actively being destroyed and polluted.
Serving as a counter-memorial, this project contends with the struggle of Indigenous People to resist the development of the Thacker Pass Mine, the largest lithium deposit in the US, and ancestral tribal land to the Pauitee and Schochoeri tribes. By giving visibility to the interconnectedness between land and memory, six moments in Thacker Pass’s landscape offer a glimpse into the perseverance of indigenous knowledge, honoring land beyond property values to acknowledge that land is culture and spirituality, a reservoir of life. The project marks the interactions between Miners and Indigenous Peoples revealing their opposite worldviews and urging us to take part in honoring the only land we know.
“If [Thacker Pass] goes up, then it’s a domino effect. The next one wants to go up, then the next, and the next until we have no land left.”
Gary McKinney, local Shoshone-Paiute tribe member.
“Indigenous peoples have the right to practise and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. [...] The right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures [...].”
Article 11.1. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007, accepted by The United States in 2016.
Future Memories: Edge of Mine
Jiayin Tian
Since the discovery of valuable metal minerals in the Tonopah area during the 1800s, the land has endured continuous erosion at the hands of mining companies, giving rise to a host of issues such as labor injustice and environmental pollution. Driven by the relentless pursuit of profit, these companies excavated large quantities of soil, leaving behind a landscape scarred by the remnants of extraction and accumulating countless pieces of rubble and abandoned infrastructure strewn around the mines. As mining companies departed, these fragments faded into obscurity and became mere relics of history. However, with the resurgence of interest in mining within the region, new companies are now seeking to reclaim this land and extract again.
Against the backdrop of the ongoing energy transition, this project aims to illuminate the fissures in both the land and collective memory caused by decades of mining extraction. These cracks are the mining cultural heritage that needs to be excavated and revealed, storing the pain brought by metal mining in the past and placing people’s hope for clean energy to repair the local ecologies. The project envisages a conceptual path to reconstruct memory and territory through a series of elements storing mining culture in the boundary of the lithium mine and the historic mining park. This endeavor seeks to strike a delicate balance between the extractive interests of capital and the endurance of the local inhabitants. Fragments of the past mining culture are reimagined, and the emerging presence of the new, adjacent lithium mine invite us to shape future memories at the mine’s edge.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Iliya Mela
From time immemorial, rural areas have served as the backbone of human civilization and urban development. All industrial revolutions were initiated and sustained by the resources extracted from these hinterlands. In Nevada, the very existence of small cities and towns punctuating the vast and distant territory is connected to mining and the stories of the old times are well documented in local archives and museums. These narratives tell of the old good times and the hard work and the ingenuity of those who mined the land, the extracted wealth and the momentary prosperity before it was shipped to the west. Yet the stories remain elusive and incomplete, failing to address the impacts of environmental pollution, unjust labor practices, forced displacement, and unequal distribution of opportunities.
“Out of Sight, Out of Mind” recreates the travel itinerary that we took as part of our field tip and explores alternative stories on Nevada’s cultural landscapes of extraction. The project sheds light on the subject of extractivism in the hinterlands powering our excessive urban lifestyles, and questions if the branding of the just energy transition is powering yet another age of dispossession and environmental devastation. Taking advantage of Nevada’s large tourist inflow along the many scenic roads, the itinerary stretches along Highway 95, from Las Vegas to Reno. Cutting through the region’s historic towns and active and close mining sites, the project takes us through a constellation of sites critically tell the story of the landscapes and lives sustaining urban America as we approach another yet energy regime.
REGIONAL RESTRUCTURING invests in visualizing the opportunities to reorganize regional industries and infrastructures to meet the lithium demands to power the green energy transition while directly benefiting the local communities beyond limited economic compensation.
Re-Charged! Lithium Powered Health
Prakriti Vasudeva
This project addresses the paradoxical impact of lithium extraction, advocating for a just energy transition that envisions systems for healing both humans and the environment.
Li-Loop, Reverse Logistics
Yunyang Ma
Based on an electrical vehicle forecast, this project explores the potential lithium battery recycle chain and its contribution to a just energy transition under both hinterland and urban contexts.
Re-Charged! Lithium-Powered Health
Prakriti Vasudeva
Nevada is at the heart of the lithium boom in the U.S. Following the federal government’s calls to secure national extraction capacities of this essential component for the green energy transition and the healthcare industry companies are rushing to make their claims. Yet, these expanded mining capacities collide with the very aspirational goals that lithium-powered batteries and mood enhancers seek to deliver: improved environmental and human health. This project deals with the paradox of lithium extraction driving societal progress while threatening the hosting communities and ecosystems.
Exploring the lithium-rich territory between Reno and Las Vegas, a stark reality unfolds: the very territory providing lithium for the entire country is deprived of essential resources, technologies, and healthcare services for those living there. The project reconciles this imbalance and seeks to redistribute resources by advocating for more equitable policies and provisions, engaging the mining company’s assets, and enhancing the livelihoods of those people inhabiting the hinterlands. The project deploys a mobile network of health components, an infrastructure system serving the needs of an aging population in a sparsely populated territory.
As we move forward, we confront the ethical conundrum of progress at the expense of remote towns and the pivotal role of human health and environmental justice in the heart of lithium mining territories. This project seeks to draw attention to the need to redefine the politics of care beyond healthcare delivery. We can not be healthy if our planet is sick.
SCHURZ
Walker River Reservation
Total Distance: 530 Miles
Total Time: 9 hrs 20 mins
NEVADA
LI-LOOP: a recycling hub for the
Yunyang Ma
The heralded shift towards an energy transition, often portrayed as an environmental panacea, demands an urgent and unflinching reevaluation of our entrenched policies and land-use strategies. Lithium batteries, glorified as the linchpins of this green revolution, unravel under scrutiny, exposing an unsettling paradox. The allure of electric vehicles, celebrated for their clean energy, masks a grim reality: a relentless drain on resources, significant environmental pollution, and a trail of ecological disruption. In the urban bastions of lithium battery usage, there lies an implicit complicity in a silent ecological onslaught against the hinterlands. These regions, rich in resources yet voiceless, bear the brunt of our so-called environmental advancements. What steps can we take to challenge and rectify these injustices? How do we ensure that our pursuit of sustainable energy does not become a cloak for environmental and social exploitation?
This project reimagines Nevada’s lithium battery supply chain aims to confront these challenges head-on. By integrating transportation and infrastructure, Li-loops proposes a sustainable system for battery leasing and recycling, creating a circular industrial chain. This approach includes developmental strategies for Silver Peak Valley, the Tesla Gigafactory at TRIC, and Fallon – key nodes in the battery lifecycle. The centerpiece, a battery recycling center in Fallon, is designed not just as a facility but as a symbol of the interconnectedness between urban demand and hinterland resources. This center, with its recycling station and microgrid, serves as a practical model for energy self-sufficiency and responsible management of the battery supply chain, reflecting a commitment to more ethical and sustainable practices in the pursuit of green energy solutions.
LINEAR REGIMES read the territory through the infrastructures of transportation and seek to reimagine alternative modes and nodal attractors powered by the green energy transition.
Green Energy Corridor 95
Pranjli Sabharwal
A proposition for a just green energy transition where infrastructure, human and animal co-exist, equally empowered.
Freight [Li]ra[i]L
Wenqing Zhong
This project reclaims existing rail lines and dismantled mine shipping routes to reimagine the connection of the current Lithium Silver Peak Mine, Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, and freight airports in Reno and Las Vegas for fast, no-gas transportation of the lithium industry.
Green Energy Corridor95: Mob[iL]e
Pranjli Sabharwal
In the midst of Nevada’s transformed landscape, where tailings, excavated land, and torn structures define the aftermath of lithium mining, this project addresses the social, economic, and ecological sustainability of the miners’ lives. By transforming Route 95 into an ‘opportunity’ corridor, the intervention enables transportation and serves as a ‘plugin’ for sustainable just energy practices. The initiative emphasizes a just transition to green energy, ensuring that the benefits are accessible to all, with a keen focus on social justice to rural communities.
Recognizing the transient nature of the miners’ lives and the mobility needs of the communities along the corridor, the project proposes designated areas along Route 95 for the temporary parking of trailers. These areas serve as meeting points and community hubs, fostering social interactions and enabling the formation of temporal communities. The miners, often perceived as latent (transient) figures in the landscape, become integral parts of a mobile community that engages with ecology and connects with rural inhabitants along the route.
The Green Energy Corridor project envisions a transformative approach to infrastructure development. Environmental equity, justice, and community engagement take center stage, setting a new standard for future initiatives. By leveraging the highway as more than just a thoroughfare, the project transforms it into a lifeline for socially sustainable living, creating a model that not only adapts to the needs of the present but also paves the way for a more sustainable and interconnected ‘rural’ future.
Green
Freight [Li]ra[iL]
Wenqing Zhong
Once a booming region due to the extraction of precious metals, a century later Central Nevada is witnessing a mining resurgence powered by the white gold rush. Lithium’s abundant presence is sparking a renewed interest in the region and calls for the revival of towns and infrastructures. One such project is the opportunity to reactivate the historic train line from Tonopah to Las Vegas that was once abandoned and dismantled, leaving the region only connected through roads. As lithium delivers on the promise of carbon emissions vehicle reduction globally, this project contends that innovation must apply to the very territories of extraction, bringing prosperity to the regions where extraction takes place. Building on this premise, the project visualizes a new[Li]ra[iL] route connecting the Reno Airport, the Tesla Gigafactory and Battery Recycling Industries at the world’s largest manufacturing park, the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, the cluster of lithium mines in Silver Peak and Rhyolite Ridge, the Gold Mine in Goldfield, and Las Vegas Airport. Running on green energy and connecting key strategic sites,[Li]ra[iL], aims to awaken the new energy potential of Central Nevada and become a blueprint for the U.S.
The project uses suspended and electric trains and operates with the green energy generated by solar farms along its route. As a demonstration component, the project focuses on designing a train station along Highway 95, in proximity of Silver Peak Valley, Tonopath, and Goldfield, a central point of major ongoing lithium, gold and silver mining projects. The station can complete the rapid unloading and loading of cargo bins through machinery. The clean energy generated by the solar panels is supplied to the lower charging road to charge electric trucks.
SHAPES OF WATER In an arid region were rain is scarce and waterintensive mining abundant, these projects seek to give visibility to the many ways in which water shapes cultural practices and sources life.
Thirsty Jamie Chen + Shaoqun Zhao
This project investigates the water-intensive dynamics of lithium mining in Nevada, revealing the impact on local communities’ water rights and questioning the environmental costs of this “green energy” source.
Reservoirs of Potential
Mardy Hillengas
The project investigates how water and open-pit mines might work together toward responsibly facilitating the green energy transition.
THIRSTY
Jamie Chen, Shaoqun Zhao
Lithium mining raises significant concerns about its environmental impacts, especially its water-intensive processes in dry climates. Despite lithium’s reputation as a key element powering the “green” energy transition, the complex entanglements between lithium mining and water overuse require closer examination in regions under hydric stress. In Nevada, Silver Peak Lithium Mine is the only active site in the US, but numerous mining claims and ongoing lithium prospections in the State anticipate groundwater over-extraction and further depletion of aquifers. In a region where agriculture, mining, and tourism compete for every drop, how can we ensure that local communities and wildlife will not go thirsty?
With regional groundwater as the main source of water supply, the disparity in water access and distribution raises questions about Lithium’s insistence on its “first in time, first in right” claims. Given the existing and projected concerns regarding recurring and intensifying droughts and water scarcity, how can local water rights advance the struggle for environmental justice for humans and not humans alike? Through environmental storytelling, our design gives visibility to three instances in the conflict between water rights and public trust resources at the heart of this lithium-rich region: the Walker River Paiute Tribal Reservation, the Silver Peak Mine, and the City of Tonopah. First, the Reservation’s Water Commons offers a space of celebration and joy for the Indigenous Community that has long stewarded water in the region. At Silver Peak, wildlife reclaims a small water oasis out of the endless pools of dormant lithium. Last, a water tower emerges in Tonopah telling of the many miles that water travels underground to reach the city. Through these sites, our investigation offers a glimpse of this water-thirsty territory and the importance of overcoming utilitarian approaches to infrastructure to instead celebrate life.
“[T]he public trust [doctrine] is more than an affirmation of state power to use public property for public purposes. It is an affirmation of the duty of the state to protect the people’s common heritage of streams, lakes, marshlands, and tidelands, surrendering that right of protection only in rare cases when the abandonment of that right is consistent with the purposes of the trust.”
Our dwindling natural resources deserve no less. Mineral County I, 20 P.3d at 809 (Rose, J., concurring). In “Walker Lake and the Public Trust in Nevada’s Waters.”. Blumm Lewis and Smith, 2022.
Reservoirs of Potential
Mardy Hillengas
Mines and water are intertwined in an asymmetrically exploitative and historied fabric that forms the foundation of the American West. In the quest to overcome our appetite for hydrocarbons, extraction of raw materials is not slowing down, but speeding up as we hedge our bets on technological redemption.
In Eastern Nevada, the town of Ruth and the city of Ely owe their existence to the Robinson Open Pit Copper Mine and the presence of spring water. All three, people, land, and water remember this legacy. Residents have mined copper at the site since the early 1800s, and the Robinson operation has left a 6-mile-long scar across the landscape and groundwater carrying pollutants from decades of extraction.
Robinson Mine will eventually be depleted and abandoned, but may provide an opportunity for mines and water to operate not as adversaries, but in concert as a closed-loop pumped hydro energy storage system for excess renewable energy.
Fog nets, woven from copper strands and supported by wooden piles, will stand over the reservoirs that this system creates, protecting against evaporation, and creating ecological islands – ambassadors of a more biophilic, and less extractive transition toward green energy.
