Landfill Library

Public Space That Repositions Waste

Gregory Cousins

MArch 2021

Supervisors:
Unit Leader: Claudia Morgado
Unit Tutor: Ruby Mungoshi
Unit Assistant: Azraa Gabru

UNIT 13^︎︎︎
Second Nature | Shared Futures

The connection of humanity to the soil can be traced back to the root of the very word. In his work, Creatures of The Soil, Reborn, Tim Ingold tracks the origin of the word from the Latin ‘Humanus’ meaning human, ‘humando’ meaning to bury and ‘humus’ meaning soil. Donna Haraway takes this a step further suggesting the coming together of people can be understood as ‘composting’. This is most apparent within the Robinson deep landfill site where, daily, layers of waste are injected into the soil.

The site has three main ecologies, the vehicular, the geological, and a pedestrian ecology present on site that has no formal infrastructure.

Through its use of material found on site, moulded “Plastiglomerate” modules mixed with the earth into which it is injected, the Landfill library seeks to create infrastructures that intervene in the above mentioned ecologies. Rather than a preconceived form, the form of the interventions are determined by the material and method of making.

Considering the durability of  “Plastiglomerate,” each of the interventions have a present day use and a future use. Future use will inevitably change function but simultaneously record a history of the site by preserving form (another layer) through its eventual rehabilitation.

Keywords:
Waste, Reuse, Additive, Land, Soil, Memory, Accumulation, Strata, Value, Plastiglomerate

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