In the field of waste management, a global plan should be implemented linking the different features of the land and driving the correct siting of plants to be transformed into public areas. From a lack of use of the areas improperly used in the past for disposal, it has now evolved into a process that generates new applications for use of these spaces.
Indeed, the planning and design stage of the management and development of waste disposal plants may comprise a sort of landscape design focussed on integrating the site into the surrounding urban area (area of public interest and use) rather than representing the result of an emergency situation.
The need to integrate waste disposal systems into an environmental planning strategy connected to the landscape and urban and extra-urban space requires an integrated planning activity and a multidisciplinary approach.
From this perspective, the technical aspects, once the exclusive domain of environmental engineering, nowadays give rise to an interesting synergy with Architecture.
Today, architects play a minor role in the design of industrial and infrastructural projects. In the specific context of Waste Management, in common practice (with the exception of a few cases) architects remain conspicuously absent from the conception, design, and implementation of major related works (waste-to-energy facilities, landfills, treatment plants, systems for the collection of waste in the cities, etc..).
Waste Architecture is a new and relatively unexplored conceptual and design topic which aims to trigger a lively debate between environmental and architecture/urban design professionals.
One of the fundamentals of Waste Architecture is that “it is possible to use the most advanced waste management processes to promote interdisciplinary cooperation in which the architectural, structural and thermodynamic aspects, suitably combined, would generate urban units with new political and social contents (Abálos, 2017)”.
Waste Architecture Platform was created in 2015 by Studio Arcoplan with the specific aim of exploring the unexpressed role of Architecture for the proper evolution of these projects, from the planning stage to full realization.
Waste Architecture Platform is a complex project conceived as a container of initiatives devoted to environmental architecture in connection with interventions relating to the collection, disposal and management of waste. It was conceived by Studio Arcoplan with the aim of developing a new and relatively unexplored conceptual and design topic, by means of a series of initiatives involving environmental professionals, architects and experts from waste related disciplines in the framework of seminars, round tables, design workshops, publications, etc…
