Wastescapes
Wastescapes
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Department of Landscape Architecture
Fall 2021
Advised by:
Robert Pietrusko
Reciprocal Landscapes at work.
Sites of material extraction and accumulation of the near future. Exploring the interaction between land reclamation, landfills and sea level rise in the Boston Metropolitan Area.
The project explores these topics trough our relationship to consumption, waste and the subsequent landscape formation.
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We live in an era of mas production and consumption. Of simultaneos extraction, accumulation, decay and regeneration. A frenetic era wher extremes often meet and occur within the same system. Where the absurd is a constant. New materials and processes have inundated rhe culture and landscape alike, pushing us closer to a world completely fabricated by man.
As single-use plastic for consumers was introduced in the 1940’s a drastic change took place in our relationship with waste and the ground as well. It is interesting to think about the accumulation layers and forms we have created in such a short period of time.
Wastescapes is an invitation to reflect upon our relationship with waste in the era of frenetic consumption and accumulation, in intersection with climate change.
As we face climate change challenges, the landscapes we extract from, dispose on, and inhabit are in constant flux, morphing into new typologies and scales of operation. The project proposes speculative imaginary for the near future.
The two designed landscapes:
The Rumeny Marsh Landfill is reinvented as The Waste Archipielago Museum. A site for memory where we gain perspective on the geological mark we’ve left on the earh.
On the other end, the Backbay Sponge Ponds are an exercise of retreat and devoiding. Carving the ground of the city out to make room for resiliency strategies and rewilding, thus giving back a space formerly reclaimed from the ocean trough infilling.
Sites of material extraction and accumulation of the near future. Exploring the interaction between land reclamation, landfills and sea level rise in the Boston Metropolitan Area.
The project explores these topics trough our relationship to consumption, waste and the subsequent landscape formation.
**********
We live in an era of mas production and consumption. Of simultaneos extraction, accumulation, decay and regeneration. A frenetic era wher extremes often meet and occur within the same system. Where the absurd is a constant. New materials and processes have inundated rhe culture and landscape alike, pushing us closer to a world completely fabricated by man.
As single-use plastic for consumers was introduced in the 1940’s a drastic change took place in our relationship with waste and the ground as well. It is interesting to think about the accumulation layers and forms we have created in such a short period of time.
Wastescapes is an invitation to reflect upon our relationship with waste in the era of frenetic consumption and accumulation, in intersection with climate change.
As we face climate change challenges, the landscapes we extract from, dispose on, and inhabit are in constant flux, morphing into new typologies and scales of operation. The project proposes speculative imaginary for the near future.
The two designed landscapes:
The Rumeny Marsh Landfill is reinvented as The Waste Archipielago Museum. A site for memory where we gain perspective on the geological mark we’ve left on the earh.
On the other end, the Backbay Sponge Ponds are an exercise of retreat and devoiding. Carving the ground of the city out to make room for resiliency strategies and rewilding, thus giving back a space formerly reclaimed from the ocean trough infilling.