Global material crises are imminent. In the very near future, recycling will no longer be a choice made by those concerned about the environment, but a necessity for all. This means a paradigm shift in domestic behavior, manufacturing, construction, and design is inevitable. The Architecture of Waste provides a hopeful outlook through examining current recycling practices, rethinking initial manufacturing techniques, and proposing design solutions for second lives of material-objects. The book touches on a variety of inescapable issues beyond our global waste crisis including cultural psyches, politics, economics, manufacturing, marketing, and material science. A series of crucial perspectives from experts cover these topics and frames the research by providing a past, present, and future look at how we got here and where we go next: the historical, the material, and the design. Twelve design proposals look beyond the simple application of recycled and waste materials in architecture—an admirable endeavor but one that does not engage the urgent reality of a circular economy—by aiming to transform familiar, yet flawed, material-objects into closed-loop resources. Complete with over 150 color images and written for both professionals and students, The Architecture of Waste is a necessary reference for rethinking the traditional role of the architect and challenging the discipline to address urgent material issues within the larger design process.

”Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Recover“ is the sustainable guideline that has replaced the ”Take, Make, Waste“ attitude of the industrial age. Based on their background at the ETH Zurich and the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, the authors provide both a conceptual and practical look into materials and products which use waste as a renewable resource. This book introduces an inventory of current projects and building elements, ranging from marketed products, among them façade panels made of straw and self-healing concrete, to advanced research and development like newspaper, wood or jeans denim used as isolating fibres. Going beyond the mere recycling aspect of reused materials, it looks into innovative concepts of how materials usually regarded as waste can be processed into new construction elements. The products are organized along the manufacturing processes: densified, reconfigured, transformed, designed and cultivated materials. A product directory presents all materials and projects in this book according to their functional uses in construction: load-bearing, self-supporting, insulating, waterproofing and finishing products.

How someone else's waste can become the next designer's building material.

Projecting forward in time from the processes of design and construction that are so often the focus of architectural discourse, Consuming Architecture examines the variety of ways in which buildings are consumed after they have been produced, focusing in particular on processes of occupation, appropriation and interpretation. Drawing on contributions by architects, historians, anthropologists, literary critics, artists, film-makers, photographers and journalists, it shows how the consumption of architecture is a dynamic and creative act that involves the creation and negotiation of meanings and values by different stakeholders and that can be expressed in different voices. In so doing, it challenges ideas of what constitutes architecture, architectural discourse and architectural education, how we understand and think about it, and who can claim ownership of it. Consuming Architecture is aimed at students in architectural education and will also be of interest to students and researchers from disciplines that deal with architecture in terms of consumption and material culture.

Steam pumping stations are exceptional buildings, a rousing, eloquent architecture designed by engineers, and an industrial edifice intended to express civic pride. They were invented, perfected and superseded in barely a century during the determined struggle to overcome the historic threat to urban life posed by industrialization. Of the buildings of the industrial period only train stations can compete with waterworks for stylistic bravura, carried over into the cool, tiled interiors and the sparkle and warmth of the cherished steam engine. This first comprehensive account of a remarkable fusion of machinery and structure weaves together architectural fashions, shifting social conditions and engineering inventiveness to show why such care was taken by the communities that commissioned them and by the men who built them, and what makes us take such pleasure in them today. British waterworks heritage is a global reference, for the historical significance of the sites themselves but also for the conservation of the many preserved waterworks, often extending to the reanimation of historic steam engines. No prior knowledge of architecture, sanitation or steam technology is required to enjoy this spirited and richly-illustrated account of a singular British building.

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