MAR-Miniera Argentiera

Mar – Miniera Argentiera is one of the three projects selected by Fondazione Italia Patria della Bellezza for the cash prize among the 2023 call for participants. LandWorks was founded in 2011, a Sardinian association whose aim is to develop projects of experimentation and artistic production in disused sites. Landworks has chosen Argentiera as its base of operations, a former mining village now partly abandoned, an immense open-air experimental field.

Situated on the westernmost coast of Sardinia, Argentiera is included in the Historical and Environmental Geominerary Park of Sardinia of the Municipality of Sassari. Founded in 1867 as a mining village, today it represents one of the island's greatest examples of industrial archaeology. Following the closure of the mine in 1963, it is severely affected by the economic crisis, high school drop-out rates and depopulation: it currently has 54 inhabitants.

Mar Miniera Argentiera is an innovative participatory project that aims to revitalise the village through the valorisation of its tangible and intangible heritage. Characterised by its geographical and social marginality, Mar intends to promote the urban, social and environmental redevelopment of the old industrial complex. The Municipality of Sassari and Landworks have restored the main historical artefacts and initiated an enhancement process, involving numerous local and international bodies and institutions.

The main challenge is to make the township a centre of experimentation and multidisciplinary artistic production of international excellence, and to realise a dinamic museum in continuous development, which puts the closed and open spaces into dialogue and transforms them into places not only dedicated to culture and learning, but also into a place for relationships and sharing, sociability and confrontation. With its actions it safeguards the vocation, identity and memory of the mining site as a place of work, innovation and production: right here, where people toiled in the mines, today culture is created and produced.