Crawick Multiverse / Charles Jenks

As Scotland tries to become one of the first countries to run solely on renewable energy, the question of what to do with the country's abandoned mining infrastructure offers a unique challenge to landscape architects. In one Scottish village, Sanquhar, the answer is to transform a former coal mine into a 55-acre work of land art. Conjuring images of Stonehenge, the art work, which opened July 10, was built from materials found on-site, including 2,000 boulders half-buried below ground.

At the urging of local residents, the landowner, Richard Scott, the Duke of Buccleuch, commissioned landscape architect Charles Jenks to build something dynamic that would benefit the region, which has been struggling economically. The piece, which is called the Crawick Multiverse, "represents the cosmos, from the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies to a spiral of rocks that make up the multiverse." While Jenks often draws inspiration from astronomy, at the nearby Garden of Cosmic Speculation for example, he told Fast Company that it was also a natural fit for this site, where prehistoric stone art and Celtic gold necklaces designed to represent the moon have been found nearby.

Traditionally, former coal mines in the country are bulldozed, blanketed with grass, and returned to the pastures they once were, but this misses an opportunity to reflect the cultural significance of a site. "Around the world, mines produce an environment which is depressing, and derelict and desolate and deserted, full of junk," Jenks states. "There have been laws put in place to restore these areas to their pristine original quality — that often means putting grass over the site, plowing it back, and returning it to the cows. We wanted to build something positive for the community instead." By using on-site materials to create the dramatic earthworks rather than flattening the site, construction costs were also reduced.

A network of paths weave through the sites four different ecosystems (grassland, mountain, water gorge and desert), while navigating landforms represent the sun, universes, galaxies and comets. At the heart of the project is a 5,000-person amphitheater inspired by a solar eclipse.

5,000-person amphitheater inspired by a solar eclipse / Charles Jenks

Other dramatic earthworks include the two galaxy mounds – Andromeda and the Milky Way – which stand at 25 and 15 meters high, respectively. The mounds represent "the cosmic ballet of the two galaxies coming together," and each have lagoons which add to their dramatic visual impact.

Andromeda and the Milky Way Earthworks / Charles Jenks

The site was once valued for its industrial purpose, but there is a beauty in the surrounding landscape that Jenks sought to emphasize in the design. The comet walk — a ridge trail with white-yellow sandstone emulating comets' tails — leads to the Belvedere, a lookout offering a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. Again, stones from the site have been repurposed, this time into a stone hand with a finger pointing to the North Star.

Intersection boulders – the largest rocks on the entire site – mark the start of the Comet Walk / Charles Jenks

The lookout from Belvedere / Charles Jenks

"It's incredibly beautiful without any intervention, from nature. Then by coal digging, it became another kind of beauty, a kind of primordial, brutal beauty." Jenks explains. "The two things – natural beauty and brutal beauty – were inspirations for what I did."

The project is potentially the beginning of an exciting series of reclamation projects poised to take hold in Scotland's post-industrial landscape. As coal mining becomes increasingly obsolete across the country, Crawick Multiverse, in its striking whimsy, offers a practical strategy for industrial redevelopment at the landscape scale.

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