MORE THAN WASTE

Project: Masters Studio - Fall 2020

Type: Reclamation Centre, Building Ecology

Location: La Mitis, Quebec, Canada

Duration: 12 weeks

Collaborators: Yasaman Arjomand, Genna Kalvaitis, Daniel Kuzev, Keyan Ye

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The steady risk of localized erosion is fueled by the global climate crisis. This condition amplifies the urgency to design robust waste systems. Eventual inland retreat is a harsh reality, and the fate of vulnerable infrastructure requires thoughtful care. 

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Wasted systems and materials lack purpose and are left idle. They are not, however, devoid of usefulness. This project aims to design localized reclamation strategies, expanding on the municipalities ambitious waste management plan, to tap the unharnessed potential of three main waste streams: concrete, wood, and plastic.

Through localizing reclamation, the project intends to cultivate a new relationship with waste. The design is comprised of two collaborative elements: (1) the provision of local recovery sites, which fuel (2) a reclamation collective built to transform wasted potential and cultivate knowledge. 

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The non-scalable relationship of virgin natural resources to soil, air, and other living species makes them subject to pulsing cycles of disturbances. In the context of climate change, architecture must work with new parameters such as weather-marine conditions, forest budworm epidemics, coastal relocation, local agriculture and tourism plastic consumption. 

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The design manual enables an expanded definition of waste, from purposeless matter to a multifaceted resource. This is achieved by designing hyper-local reclamation strategies, internalizing waste management plans, and unharnessing strong potentials within underutilized waste streams. The spatialization of wasteful processes and invisible potentials, manifests itself in the proposed design. This Reclamation Collective responds to its changing environment and the demands of its users, supplying a dynamic nexus that helps recover, reclaim, and refuel the surrounding community. 

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The Reclamation collective is fundamentally the design of a waste system, not a specific building. Its operations, paired with material collections at nearby recovery sites, are meant to be replicable in any municipality within the MRC de La Mitis.

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This knowledge is meant to be shared with the community to move beyond single-use ideology and actively embrace material imperfections. In the long term, changing existing practices around waste management is essential to normalize waste design and build communities.

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The storage, assembly and repurposing of reclaimed materials in the Reclamation collective are developing building processes beyond the building-object. These include advanced alternatives for harvesting and processing new wood materials in order to use 100% of tree parts. Woodworking techniques as carbon sinks (DLT, cDLT, OSB, live edges members) are also introduced as a philosophy for building for the future.  Assembly guides are also provided for new fabrication