The Monastery Of Mining
The Monastery of Mining reimagines monastic life by uniting devotion, labor, and communal living into a model for rural revitalisation and cultural resistance. Located in Cornwall, it addresses educational deprivation, particularly in areas like Pendeen, through a training hub focused on lithium extraction, geology, and geothermal energy. The project aligns local development with global sustainability goals while confronting Cornwall’s legacy of cultural erasure, referencing the Prayer Book Rebellion and suppression of the Cornish language. Through architecture that blends Celtic and industrial typologies, it reclaims symbols of extraction into a monolithic expression of future potential and territorial identity.
The facility comprises three key components: a Lithium Educational Centre, a Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) workshop using derivative byproducts to create new materials, and a Co-Housing Complex that promotes collective sustainability through use of cutting-edge materials emerging from the project’s own research. Together, these elements form a living prototype where education, industry, and everyday life are deeply interwoven, a cultural sanctuary and industrial beacon for Cornwall’s post-extractive future.
