Abstract:

Extraction is a participatory installation that invites visitors of all ages to engage with materials, foregrounding the often-invisible processes that shape our built environment. Through the collective transportation of a shared resource, participants contribute to a growing pavilion and become agents within a choreography of extraction and assembly. What is typically understood as an abstract industrial operation is transformed into an embodied, collective experience, where the user must decide whether—and how—to participate.

Developed by students from undergraduate and graduate levels in the Architecture and Planning programs at Dalhousie University, the project was included in Nocturne’s Art at Night Festival. Responding to the festival’s theme Ground, the installation evaluates architecture and its dependency on extractive landscapes. The installation operates simultaneously as a public artwork, research platform, and pedagogical device, drawing on principles of design-for-disassembly to minimize material waste and support future reuse.

Rather than presenting a finished object, Extraction proposes architecture as an evolving system - shaped through participation and reuse. The project seeks to encourage reflection on complicity, responsibility, and agency within extractive economies, while opening space and public forum to imagine alternative material practices. This approach invites architecture that is grounded in reciprocity, collective authorship, and stewardship