Deconstructed Landscape:

Landscape and Architecture through the lens of Building Waste

Construction and demolition, and by association architecture, create prolific amounts of waste each year. The building sector created 530 million metric tons of construction and demolition waste in the United States in 2013, 90% of which was purely demolition related (EPA. Advancing Sustainable Materials Management. 2013).  For scale, the United States produced 254 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW consists of residential and commercial garbage and recyclables) in 2013.   Between 1996 and 2003 New York City saw a $400 million increase in its sanitation budget due to the closure of its last remaining landfill in Freshkills, Staten Island causing the city to start exporting its solid wastes to other states(NYC Sanitation 2004).  Connecticut is running out of landfill space rapidly, in particular for C+D wastes and Massachusetts is considering a ban on the disposal of C+D waste products entirely(NYC Sanitation 2004).  

A vacant, derelict building on a property in the city of Buffalo is not the best use of that parcel. The objective of this thesis is to explore ways of using and/or storing materials from demolished or deconstructed abandoned properties on site in order to address the environmental impacts created by demolition waste.  Temporary rebuilding on site utilizing recovered materials could serve as a way to avoid having to transport a portion of the materials off site to recycling facilities or waste facilities by serving as a creative way to store construction materials on site for future projects. Through  this process, we can begin to take a landscape up approach to building that could provide ways to blur the boundaries between building waste, landscape, and architecture.  The installations would be both performative and informative and would integrate with the landscape to allow the former house site to become a positive environmental influence by augmenting any existing positive ecological functions and perhaps providing additional ecological functions such as water runoff control, filtration, and C02 sequestration.  The architecture of the constructs would address the importance of aesthetics in ecological design and the impact that it has on public perception of waste and “green” design. The economics of ecological design through the reuse of existing materials would also be furthered by showing what is possible with the introduction of closed-loop material practices. The site-holistic designs could open a new social dialogue, which would address the value and utility of reused materials and their potential for positive environmental impacts.  

The end goal of this process is the transformation of a vacant, derelict property into an environmentally regenerative, socially stimulating, and commercially viable site.  Repetition of this process at multiple sites across the city could begin to develop a network of temporary socio-ecological interaction sites that begin to store reusable materials for future construction, therefore exhibiting the evolutionary characteristics of a living system at the urban scale.

Fraser:

1. Fraser critiques the modes of research through design put forth by Le Corbusier’s idea of process as a spiral form and Donald Schon’s as a sequence of iterative loops. These modes, although based in design are still chronologically linear as opposed to the two-fold movement which alternates between past, present, and future.  How might a two-fold approach relate more clearly to the interdisciplinary nature of design research?
2. “Design research in architecture thus needs to see itself as being entirely framed by socio-economic and cultural factors, with, as noted, these largely located within urban practices and processes.” Cultural and socio-economic factors are always shifting.  How can critical practice best address these shifts?
3. “But what architecture is certainly able to do is to examine, and experiment, with the conditions under which it is conceived and produced, which means that a very real task for design research is to act as a mechanism for a wider critique of architecture itself.” Is a two-fold approach more effective at this than other methods?

Rendell:

1. Rendell defines four critical research methodologies. Research in building science, social sciences and humanities in buildings, history and theory, and practice led research in architectural design. How can these be applied to Fraser’s analysis of historical and two-fold approaches?
2. There is a clear ascertain that muf does not identify as feminists yet they identify their work as furthering feminist architectural design. How do we clarify the distinction between design research and feminist design?  Is there a distinction?
3. Site-writing is defined as taking the location of the critic into consideration to condition their interpretative role. How do we navigate this condition in design research?

Deconstructed Landscape

LANDSCAPE:

The ecological functions of landscape play a critical role in the health of our environment, in particular the health of our water resources among others.  Buffalo is uniquely positioned on the edge of the foremost supply of freshwater in the world, the Great Lakes (EPA).  In addition, it is next to one of the largest freshwater falls in the world in Niagara Falls.  Every second 750,000 gallons of water go over its edge (NYS Parks).  The average house in Erie County uses about 230 gallons per day, and about 84,000 gallons annually (ECWA 2015) or about 12% of the per second capacity of the falls.  Things like sewage treatment, agricultural runoff, and storm water runoff can have large impacts on the health of the Great Lakes.  For instance, high levels of phosphorus in Lake Erie have caused algal blooms so large that they reduce the amount of oxygen in the water, potentially posing risks to fish and plant life (EPA).  The role of landscape in controlling surface water runoff is key to protecting our water resources.  Contemporary architecture uses landscape design to decorate or to hide imperfections, relegating landscape to a purely aesthetic role.  This form of thinking stymies the ecological potential of integrated landscape and architecture.  The disciplinary and formal seam between architecture and the landscape needs to be explored to produce new languages of interaction as well as re-introduce old languages in the hopes we can create a new paradigm from which we can design from.

ARCHITECTURE:

The creation of works of architecture also creates works of waste.  The building sector created 530 million metric tons of construction and demolition waste in the United States in 2013, 90% of which was purely demolition related (EPA. Advancing Sustainable Materials Management. 2013).  For scale, the United States produced 254 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW consists of residential and commercial garbage and recyclables) in 2013.   Between 1996 and 2003 New York City saw a $400 million increase in its sanitation budget due to the closure of its last remaining landfill in Freshkills, Staten Island causing the city to start exporting its solid wastes to other states(NYC Sanitation 2004).  Connecticut is running out of landfill space rapidly, in particular for C+D wastes and Massachusetts is considering a ban on the disposal of C+D waste products entirely(NYC Sanitation 2004).   A shift from demolition based practices toward a reuse and recycle based approach will begin to lessen the amount of waste that enters the landfills annually from the building sector.

ARCHITECTURE+LANDSCAPE:

Through the deconstruction, or “unbuilding” of a vacant Buffalo property, we can begin to take a landscape up approach to building that could provide ways to blur the boundaries between deconstruction, landscape, and architecture. Utilizing the materials from the home, a series of reformed architectures in the form of ecological installations could be built.  The installations would be both performative and informative.  These “living structures” would integrate with the landscape to allow the former house site to become a positive environmental influence by augmenting any existing positive ecological functions and perhaps providing additional ecological functions such as water runoff control, filtration, and C02 sequestration .  The architecture of the constructs would address the importance of aesthetics in ecological design and the impact that it has on public perception of “green” design. The economics of ecological design through the reuse of existing materials would also be furthered by showing what is possible with the introduction of closed-loop material practices.  Temporary rebuilding on site utilizing recovered materials could also serve as a way to avoid having to transport some materials off site to recycling facilities or waste facilities by serving as creative ways to store construction materials on site for future projects.  The end goal of this process being the transformation of a vacant property into an environmentally regenerative, socially stimulating, and commercially viable site.  Repetition of this process at multiple sites across the city could begin to develop a network of temporary socio-ecological interaction sites that also store reusable materials for future construction, therefore exhibiting the evolutionary characteristics of a living system.

Reading 1: Cross

1. Cross states that traditionally design teachers are firstly designers and teachers by coincidence. Teachers in general however should be teachers first and “only secondly, if at all, specialists in any field”.  “The main distinction lies in the difference between the instrumental, or extrinsic, aims that specialist education usually has, and the intrinsic aims that general education must have.  What are the extrinsic aims of design education?
2. Cross quotes Ryle (1949) in his writing that the difference between being educated and being highly trained is a matter of “knowing how” versus “knowing that”. If this can result in a designer that is very skilled but that also have little cognition of what they are doing, how does design education avoid that paradox?
3. Is the phrase “further research is needed” applicable to design research if the process of design is solution oriented? Once we reach a solution how do we know we need to go further?

Reading 2: Verbeke:

1. Verbeke, like Cross, notes that design school teaching staff are typically practitioners within the field. Is this common across all professional degree types?  Or, is this unique to design education programs?
2. Verbeke analyzes Ranulph Ganville’s declaration that there cannot be research without design. Ganville concludes that it is “impossible to make design subject to the rules of research, when research itself is only possible because of design”.  If the tools of research had to be designed before research could be done, does that mean that design is validated as research?
3. “So, the key issue for developing architectural research is to incorporate practice and design studio work into it. Instead of simply research ‘on’ architecture, researchers should try to establish research ‘in the medium’ of architecture”. What kinds of design problems would require both types of research?

Frayling:

1. If a painting, as described by Picasso is a product and not a process of searching, then what can we call the process of painting itself? What do we call the process of finding inspiration for a painting?
2. Art, like design and many other forms of expression, is an iterative process. The arts do not repeat individual paintings or styles, much like architecture does not repeat construction of particular buildings or design movements.  History is implicit in the nature of how our minds work.  Is the process of deciphering history research if the product of the research is finite?
3. On the surface the scientific process is much different than what would be considered a design process. This is mainly because the scientific method is known, whereas there are many valid design processes.  Are there certain distinctions between what we can consider to be the “scientific process” and the design or creative process that should remain distinct?  Are there some make sense to homogenize?

Solomon:

1. Solomon talks briefly about opinions expressed by Sylvia Lavin, Mark Wigley, and Brett Steele that architectural theses are “too often non-rigorous, hyper-personal, and quasi-architectural in nature”.  What about being hyper-personal can make them quasi-architectural?
2. Herbert Simon is quoted in the text as saying “design is a method for solving problems that have more than one right answer”. What kinds of problems have more than one answer?  What kinds have only 1?
3. Solomon concludes that “the move away from individual theses toward teacher-led, group research projects found in many research studios represents a diminished role for intuition in the design process. However, this analysis depends on the cliché that design is subjective and wild, while research is objective and predictable”. Is the way that we decide what to research and what not to research subjective?
4. Solomon writes “In every case, both design and research are understood as personal, creative acts that simultaneously produce aesthetic artifacts, directly engage extra-disciplinary issues, and are guided by personal and political considerations”. How do we assess the value or effectiveness of work that has been done?