Plasti(city): Urban Waste as Ephemeral Building Blocks

Abstract

The intent of this dissertation was to contribute to the discourse of informal settlement upgrade through investigating the implications of an architectural intervention that can be applied within the current state of insecure tenure in the informal settlement of Plastic View. Through negotiating these existing conditions, the role of the architect as a spatial agent (Awan et al 2011) was explored through engaging in participatory action research (MacDonald 2012; Vaajakallio 2012) to design an intervention that will further enable and ultimately empower the existing resilience found within the community.

Learning from the community’s architectural language, and borrowing from the proposed site for the intervention (which currently serves as a dumping ground), the use of local, upcycled and waste materials were considered. The use of waste as a building material extends beyond the sole concept of resilient development within an informal settlement and into the realm of the construction industry as a whole. In fact, the World Economic Forum (2016:11), attributes the construction industry as being the single largest global consumer of resources and raw materials, consuming up to around 50% of global steel production and using around 3 billion tonnes of raw materials for product manufacturing annually. In order to move away from this linear approach of construction where materials are sourced, used and disposed of, the emphasis has shifted towards circular thinking where products and components are considered within a loop of re(use) in order to minimise waste (Arup 2016:9-10).

Hence, although the primary focus of this intervention was to provide temporary relief, the architecture itself evolved to be a statement that advocates for change through creating ephemeral architecture from waste that has the opportunity to serve a lasting impact within the disadvantaged community of Plastic View.