Reimagining Satsop:

Future Life for an Industrial Ruin

Michelle Culaba

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

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of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Architecture
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University of Washington

2020
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Committee:

Jeffrey Ochsner
Susan Jones

Program authorized to offer degree:

Architecture
 ProQuest Number: 28023689

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Michelle Culaba
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 University of Washington

Abstract

Reimagining Satsop:

Future Life for an Industrial Ruin

Michelle Culaba

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Committee:

Jeffrey Ochsner
IE Susan Jones
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As a strange and alluring artifact of abandoned industry, the

Satsop Nuclear Plant has been represented and re-represented by

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many. This never finished industrial ruin is irreversibly tied to the

optimism of 20th century nuclear technology and the project’s

subsequent failure, trapped in a state of tension between permanence

and decay, the future and the past. Reimagining Satsop examines

the site’s entangled histories and questions how this disregarded

industrial artifact can transform for future utility. This thesis explores

imagination and transience within stigmatized abandoned structures,

highlighting the power of perception and the role of architecture in

constructing layers of physical strata and collective meaning.

 REIMAGINING SATSOP:
Future Life for an Industrial Ruin

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MICHELLE CULABA

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COMMITTEE:
JEFFREY OCHSNER
SUSAN JONES

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Acknowledgements Table of Contents

This thesis would not have been possible without the generosity Introduction 4
of those who have inspired, advised, encouraged and supported Theoretical Framework 6
me. I extend my deepest gratitude to Jeffrey Ochsner and Susan
Frontier of Timber and Sea 14

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Jones for guiding me through this journey.
Experiential Qualities 38

Transformation 44

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The Journey 50

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Reflections 90

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 PROLOGUE
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Embracing Uncertainty

This thesis searches for an expression for the human experience After my tour of Satsop was cancelled early in the pandemic,

of a specific place in the context of larger questions about rural the inability to visit followed by general isolation became an

community, landscape, and industry. The never finished Satsop important condition of the project as it forced me to look inward

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Nuclear Plant near the Chehalis River in southwest Washington to find a design response that expressed what I was only able to

is irreversibly tied to the optimism of twentieth century nuclear imagine. Largely working from information and images available

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technology and the project’s eventual failure, now trapped in a online and from personal imagining, I built a relationship with

state of tension between permanence and decay, the future and this tower that I had never actually experienced. So my thesis

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the past. project became a work of imagination by necessity, but it also

speaks to a universal desire to understand the presence of our

In summer 2019, I came across the Satsop site on a drive to the bodies in space, the relationship of materiality and imagination,

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Washington coast, and the strangeness and vacancy of this place and the sense of loss and grief that resulted from Satsop’s initial

stuck with me. When it came time to choose a thesis project, I optimism followed by failure. Thus, my thesis project explores

decided to return to the Satsop site as an exercise in imagination. overcoming failure and making something when initially all

However, like so many other things since March 2020, this thesis may seem impossible. Addressing a site of emptiness and loss

has been substantially shaped by circumstances of the COVID-19 became for me a way of coming to terms with my sense of loss

pandemic. and feeling of isolation under the peculiar circumstances of

spring and summer 2019.

Fig. 1 Satsop Nuclear Power Plant

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INTRODUCTION
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This project began as an investigation of the abandoned Satsop Perhaps the fate of Satsop suggests a larger conversation about

nuclear complex, a visible but largely unknown site near the rural communities and industry as the forgotten fragments of our

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Chehalis River in southwest Washington. Study of this site society today. But this thesis primarily questions architecture’s

revealed deeper questions about comprehension of time and the potential to shift the way we perceive our industrial past and

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role that built artifacts play in perception of time and memory. imagine potential futures of these remains.

This thesis considers the meaning, memory and future of

industrial lands, the intertwinement of space and time, decay and

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longevity.

The scale and heft of Satsop’s structures engenders a sense of

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permanence which defies common perceptions of time. Yet,

simultaneously, the decay of these abandoned structures brings

an acute awareness of time’s relentlessness and ultimate fragility.

These uncelebrated monuments symbolize elements of our

collective history, yet they are mostly forgotten.

Fig. 2 Detritus at Satsop Nuclear Reactor

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
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“The places in which we have experienced daydreaming Our experience of buildings and places is undeniably linked

reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our to memory, but in a way that is framed by our anthropocentric

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memories of former dwelling-places are relived as day-dreams perception of time. We think of past and future, layered histories

these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all the time.”1 of place, decay and permanence. Meaning emerges from our

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Gaston Bachelard, Poetics of Space limited temporal perspectives and our individual associations

with artifacts or places.

The two conceptual themes of memory and meaning guide

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this thesis. In regards to physical space, philosopher Gaston

Bachelard links memory to imagination in how people make

sense of the world in which they find themselves, through the

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poetic language of images and likeness which expand the internal

structures of the world.2 The reverberence of past comes from

our associations of things, as we prescribe meaning to the spaces

and artifacts we encounter, which then shapes our experience of

future spaces and artifacts.

Fig. 3 Satsop Cooling Tower

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 Memory Meaning

Italian architect and theorist Also Rossi argues that built space Humans have a fundamental desire to make artifacts that endure,

is the locus of collective memory, as it gathers traces of lived compelled to resist the endless cycle of nature’s eroding forces.

experience, embodied in artifacts that Rossi calls monuments.3 This pursuit is part of what defines humanity, but it is through

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Monuments may have associations to events, histories, places or collective understanding that the artifacts acquire revelatory

spirits, but always they contain memory. quality or meaning. German-American philosopher and political

theorist Hannah Arendt describes this as “the human condition.”5

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Memory is not an exact science; it is rarely completely accurate According to Arendt, the production of worldly objects is

and often cumbersome. For Rossi, architecture is a constant significant in that it is human fabrications that endure beyond the

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reinterpretation of memory, an assembly of fragments from lives of their producers and provide a source of instruction for the

disparate things continually altered in a constant state of future.

becoming. The built form is an embodiment of our collective

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memory.4 We think of memory in terms of time, but memory Industrial structures are often built with a similar permanence,

encompasses time beyond its linear progression, suggesting yet they hold a different place in the human mind due to the

elements of duality, tension, permanence, and place. This thesis paradoxical character of our relationship with industry. The

considers our memories of post industrial remains and how our distance of industry from everyday human activity can mean we

memories are shaped by our anthropocentric associations. have few personal associations with industrial structures. The

remains of industry may remind us of the past, but they also

allow other associations if we now encounter them as ruins.

Fig. 4 Homesteaders and their home, 1900 Fig. 5 Old Building in Centralia, WA

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 Industrial Remains

As a typology, industrial infrastructure is often associated with

sentimentality or stigma. The images included here (to the left)

show photographs by German photographers Bernd and Hilla

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Becher documenting the architecture of industrial structures

as a typological study. Beginning in the early 1960s, German

artists Bernd and Hilla Becher spent decades photographing

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hundreds of industrial plants and buildings in Europe and North

America, such as water towers, blast furnaces, and gas tanks.

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The structures were photographed in an obsessively formalist

way that explored the notions of archive and emphasized the

structures’ monumental effect.6

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In his work Homage to Bernd Becher (to the right), British artist

Idris Kahn superimposes the Becher photographs into a densely

layered composite image, representing the way these structures

exist in our collective memory, as one blurred, singular symbol

of industry. The resulting ghostly palimpsest suggests the serial

nature of the original documentation and also a melancholy

Fig. 6 Gas Tanks 1965-2009, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher reminder of passing time.7 Fig. 7 Homage to Bernd Becher, 2007, Idris Khan

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 As objects transform and decay, their meaning may evolve. Yet, interconnectedness between the different layers of history in the

as we transition to new technologies and new sources of energy, landscape and need for reconstruction after acute or traumatic

these associated structures often become obsolete. Most are conditions, particularly in post-industrial places with chronic

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demolished, with very few examples of reuse or preservation. economic and social losses.8 As a ruined landscape, the Satsop

These human constructions are lost and increasingly recede from site is presently stuck between the healing and scarring process,

memory. Demolition also means sending millions of pounds left as a temporal and physical void.

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of rubble to a landfill, a huge waste of potential resource. The

investments of capital, materials, creative thought and ingenuity Retaining ruins holds both physical and cognitive value. In our

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are simply thrown away. society of ever-increasing rapid change, physical relics remind

us of our collective memory and give meaning to life. However,

In Post-Industrial Landscape Scars, Anna Storm, a researcher at the often inhuman scale and singular forms, along with negative

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Stockholm University, offers the scar as a metaphor in approach industrial associations, pose a real challenge for reuse. And

to deindustrialized sites. Post-industrial landscapes are places lacking familiarity and the linkage of personal memories, they

which have been marked in some way by the political, social, seem less pressing as a focus of preservation. Each piece of

and economic forces of the past which at some point receded. obsolete industrial infrastructure poses an individual challenge if

Abandoned sites are often described as a ruined landscape but it is to continue to contribute to both our present and future.

Storm prefers the scar metaphor in its ability to emphasize the

Fig. 8 Explosions demolish power station cooling towers in Kent

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