Fall 2016, ARCH 100C — René Davids

Beginning in 1870 until it closed in 1923, the Oakland Paving Company mined a body of traprock useful for construction and building applications at the Bilger Quarry near the intersection of Broadway and 51st Street, crushed it, and shipped it out via a rail spur. What’s left of the quarry is now surrounded by the Rockridge Shopping Center, St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, the California College of the Arts, and the Claremont Country Club, which uses water from the old pit filled by a branch of the Glen Echo Creek to irrigate its golf course. The The Arch 100C studio was setup to analyze and recommended alternatives to the currently neglected landscape. To reconnect the quarry with its immediate environs as well as the larger landscape, the studio participants designed a building complex including a planetarium and an earth observatory devoted to the study and observation of the surrounding geology, landscapes and skies.