The Things We Throw Away

The Things We Throw Away explored existing waste materials and management practices of home and industry with the ambition of conceiving a method for utilising generated waste in architecture that reimagines the embedded value of everyday detritus.

Responding to the accumulation of existing waste and the desire to slow raw material extraction, circular intervention becomes a necessary physical aspect for future quality design. The studio argued that waste can be an on-going resource for future recirculation when intentionally designed.

Examining case studies demonstrating circular design principles, students applied key concepts of reuse, disassembly, adaptability, and longevity to a series of component designs across scales. Initially working through physical model-making with waste materials, students built a catalogue that went towards forming an argument for meaningfully interrupting linear end-of-life principles.

Through collective mapping of catalogued waste in Melbourne’s CBD (a microcosm for domestic, commercial and construction/demolition waste), student projects demonstrated motives for waste recirculation in self-selected sites that connected intense waste-making with place and people. The results of this work informed two architectural proposals that transformed waste materials across physical layers of structure and proposed a system for continual material stewardship across life cycles.

Image Source: Studio’s first process mapping of found and generated waste in the City across a few days in September, 2022.