'The Golden Datum' aims to explore future modes of landscape commodification in Arizona, in a postindustrial, post-work era. To do this, gold is used as a physical and cultural datum to map the synergy between economic models of commodity and natural depositing patterns. These processes are mapped and responded to through the design of five interactive, responsive infrastructures. The five proposed infrastructures seek to open an empathetic dialogue between landscape and inhabitant; they are brought together in an effort to question how human leisure can be commodified, and how a physical building fabric can amplify this relationship. This is done through the programmatic framework of a temporary gold prospectors’ campsite outpost in the Arizona wilderness.

Historic gold exploration infrastructures, from panning camps to mining towns, provide a basis for reinterpreting the industrial symbolism of tents and water towers as places for leisure. Modern gold prospecting tourism is put forward speculatively as a potential economic model for Arizona, commodifying perception and the yearning for physical meaning.

The inherent inert nature of gold is used not only as a cultural datum for explorative research, but also as a physical datum within the building.