LAND FILL uses the politics of waste as a theoretical lens to explore the contentious proposal for a new landfill in the Mornington Peninsula Shire. The proposal instead proposes a new typology of waste management that phases out waste production while creating a multifunctional and adaptive landscape.
By exploring the sociopolitical and volumetric conditions surrounding the proposal at the Old Pioneer Quarry, it is revealed that although opposing the landfill proposal, it is the residents who are contributing to waste generation and thereby setting the demand for a new landfill in the Shire.
LAND FILL sets up a regional strategy for the reduction and diversion of waste from landfill at existing and proposed waste management facilities in the Mornington Peninsula Shire. This thesis investigates the effects of these strategies on site at the Old Pioneer Quarry.
A sorting centre is established on site to divert compostable and recyclable waste from landfill. The residual waste is compacted, sealed, wrapped, and seeded to create components that can be stacked or sloped.
As sorting technology and reduction gather momentum, the volume of waste to landfill decreases resulting in phases of form generation.
Initially, the site is transformed by fabricating terrain using the waste, a large scale gesture that sets up the infrastructure of the site. By engaging with the process of fabricating terrain using components that are stacked or sloped, the key drivers of program: hydrology and ecology, emerge throughout the landform’s construction. Fabricating Terrain integrates program within the process of land fill helping the community recognise the impact their waste is having on the Old Pioneer Quarry.
As the volume of waste is reduced due to community awareness and sorting technologies the design shifts to transforming the surface. The smaller volume of waste allows for the more subtle manipulation of the landforms surface, creating an adaptive landscape that can be manipulated seasonally according to the desired programmatic and ecological outcome.
By engaging with the process of landfill, rather than attempting to prevent or mask its presence, a design gesture emerges which engages visitors to become critical of the impact of their own waste consumption, reducing the production of waste. The Old Pioneer Quarry becomes the source of a new typology which phases out landfill while generating a performative and adaptive landform. Bygenerating sociopolitical change through landform, the Old Pioneer Quarry sets a region precedent for how disused quarries can be used to phases out landfill and generate a political post-industrial park.
In conjunction with presentation panels and book, a short film was prepared to engage with the evolution of the project over time in a more fluid way. Forming part of the community awareness campaign, Landfill the movie engages with the public through social media generating change in waste production at its source.
STUDENT PROJECT | Land Fill | Louise Krstic
Student | Louise Krstic
School | The University Of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria
Course | Masters Of Landscape Architecture, 2013
Image & Text Credit | Louise Krstic
