Jose Santacruz ’27, Architecture

Jose Santacruz ’27

Major

Architecture

Project Title

Mining for the Climate

Presentation Link

View Jose's Presentation

Certificate(s): Urban Studies

With the climate crisis turning attention towards green energy and sustainable technologies like electric vehicles, the demand for critical minerals like lithium has increased. Unfortunately, mining has many adverse effects on surrounding communities, but this reality is often ignored or portrayed as an unfortunate sacrifice for the greater good. I worked with the Blue Lab’s Mining for the Climate team to challenge these dominant narratives, focusing on Thacker Pass, Nevada and its communities’ voices. I traveled to northern Nevada alongside my team where I took on the roles of interviewer, equipment and data manager and photographer as we interviewed over a dozen community members, academics and activists. After fieldwork, I helped conceptualize and create a multimedia map highlighting the McDermitt Caldera as home. I made a landscape map of the caldera using a collage of my illustrations and photographs taken by the whole team to represent the habitats and relationships between living and nonliving beings. This internship has highlighted the physical environment’s impact on its inhabitants and the importance of respecting that relationship, a lesson I plan to take into architecture. In future, I hope to continue learning to engage with community members in order to design for them.