The Value of Garbage

KAM workshops 2011 →

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Marc Quinn - The littoral zone - Baby by pfer on Flickr.

Via Flickr: Musée océanique de Monaco

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The zombie as the figure of architecture

John McMorrough, 'Undead: Ru(m)inations: the haunts of contemporary architecture' in M.Guberman, J.Reidel, and F.Rosenberg. Monster: Perspecta 40. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008. | #kamworkshops2011

Once a discipline is defined to in relation to preservation rather than a its performative attributes, it is a constrain rather than opportunity. While at one point such preservations were a necessity, they have now outlived their initial use. At this point the disciplinary conception of architecture concretizes the formats of practice as a rite: what was once the saving grace is now the problem it self. The impulse that originated as a mechanism of preservation has now being transposed into meaning -the defense mechanisms of architecture have become its content; the fort became the prison. 

The disciplinary argument is no longer capable of sustaining the development of architecture and should no longer be continually popped out. it is not a matter of choice since the options for architecture to correct its course -to move to technology or economics (pragmatism), or perhaps retire into its own dogma (utopia) -are all to familiar, each an individual manifestation of a collective amnesia regarding the impossibility of such facilities. it is not possible to simply forget or ignore these constructions. Instead architecture needs to creatively dismantle its own fortifications, to try yet again a new ru(m)ination. 

Proposing the zombie as the figure of architecture today clearly has pejorative connotations; however the zombie also has a certain kind of freedom. ...the promise of these conditions is the articulation of new possibilities. the opportunity and limit of this juncture is the lack of critical apparatus to evaluate the demands of this new intelligence on its own term rather than with the criteria of older models. 

What is necessary is a rearticulating of the capacities of architecture, in order to retest the historic legacies of the architectural and to reengage an understanding of these again as means, not ends. In brief it is something worth thinking about... again. 

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#kamworkshops2011: Seating objects produced during the 1st studio week.

See all works here.

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The Residual Character of Commons in the Age of Digital Reproduction

by KERNEL (Pegy Zali, Petros Moris, Theodoros Giannakis)

Bibliography

Bound By Law?, Center for the Study of the Public Domain, by K. Aoki, J. Boyle, 2006

Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership, by L. Hyde, 2010

Commonwealth, by M. Hardt & A. Negri, 2009

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, by L. Lessig, 2005

Reclaiming the Commons, by Naomi Klein, 2001

Romans, Roads, and Romantic Creators: Traditions of Public Property in the Information Age, by Carol M. Rose, 2003

Boyle, J., 2003. The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain, by J. Boyle, 2003

The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Market by Michael A. Heller, 1998

Benkler, Y., 2007. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, by Y. Benkler, 2007

Download (.zip - 48,3 MB)

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Symptom, Garbage, Excrement: Topologies of Value

by Yannis Stavrakakis | #kamworkshops2011

If, today, we are living in the age of garbage – and I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that – this is not only because recycling technologies constitute the second fastest growing investment area in OECD countries, reversing the traditional understanding of garbage as waste and re-constituting it as a source of profit. This is not merely a matter of empirical observation and economic efficiency; it is primarily a matter of conceptual (reflexive) understanding. If we check a dictionary – I did check the one installed in my computer; I think it draws from Webster’s – garbage is invariably involved in the constitution of value and worth, precisely as an index of the their negation/exception. In particular, garbage is defined as ‘a thing that is considered worthless or meaningless’. It inaugurates thus a topology of value ‘contaminating’ all assumptions of identity, all hierarchical oppositions instituting social reality (identity/difference, clean/dirty, primary/secondary). It may be the case, then, that without attributions of garbage status – to give a topical example, the economy is today full of such attributions, from so-called ‘junk bonds’ to PIGS – no worth can be acknowledged; The empty signifier ‘garbage’ is thus revealed as possessing a potent value on a formal level, as a marker of the limits, of the periphery of a system, in fact of every system: without it no systematicity can be established. And without registering and working-through this (symbolic-affective) function no (personal or social) change can be envisaged.[…]

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#kamworkshops2011 | regulations for garbage disposal at sea

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#kamworkshops2011 participants

Ανδρέας Αλυγίζος, Ευγενία Ασημακοπούλου, Μαρία Βεργοπούλου, Αντριάνα Βουτσινά, Κώστας Γεωργίου, Εύη Ζούζουλα, Ιωάννα Θάνου, Χρυσαυγή Ιορδανίδου, Ειρήνη Καραολή, Μυρτώ Καρύδη, Ελένη Κιτάνη, Χριστίνα Κραμποκούκη, Ηρώ Μαζαράκη, Ελένη ΜακΚιραχαν, Κρίστελ Μακρή, Γιάννης Μάμουνας, Ελίζα Μαντέ, Γιάννης Μαρουλάκης, Ελένη Μαστρογεωργοπούλου, Λίλια Μήτσιου, Μαρία Μήτσουλα, Αναΐς Μικιρντιτσιάν, Ευαγγελία Μώρη, Εύη Ξεξάκη, Τάνια Παπασωτηρίου, Φώτης Ροβολής, Χαρά Στεργίου, Ιλεάνα Τόλη, Δήμητρα Τσιάμη, Στεφανία Ορφανίδου, Πηνελόπη Παπαδημητρακάκη, Άννα Παπαδοπούλου, Στέλλα Ρωσσικοπούλου, Δημήτρης Σπυρόπουλος, Γιούλη Σπυροπούλου, Αγγελική Τερζάκη, Εβελίνα Φαλιάγκα, Στέφανος Φίλιππας, Βάλλια Φραγκιά, Ουρανία Χατζηθεοφίλου

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Earthship

The main idea behind the project "Earthship" designed and implemented by the american architect Michael Reynolds lies in the reuse of garbage as building material. The concepts and the design of Earthship, developed as early as the 1970s, were later elaborated in three books published in 1990s titled: "How to build your Own," "System and Components", "Evolution Beyond Economics." The books were conceived as a combination of manifesto, technical study and construction manual. A critical reading of Reynold's conceptual and design approach, highlights the connections between this project and the architectural culture developed in the 1970s where Reynold's Earthship shaped its own (pre) history of sustainable design. This project and its analysis contributes in many ways to the research approach of this year's kamworkshops with the provovative theme: "the value of garbage" and it will be presented in the next days in this tumblr through an extended post.

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Waste management facility in Chania. See here photos from the visit.

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#kamworkshops2011 | Map of Clear Broken Glass by Robert Smithson 

In 1969 near Vancouver, Robert Smithson attempted to create an earthwork which was never realized:“Island of Broken Glass.” In the middle of the Georgia Straight he intended to dump 100 tons of broken glass onto a small rock island called Miami Islet, completely covering its surface with the shattered material. Due to the swirl of protests stemming from environmentalists and anti-Americanists, the project was suspended by a governmental telegram at the last moment.

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#thevalueofgarbage | history of the toilet in cross sections. 

"1 pan closet and 2 valve closet: failure to dilute and purge bowl contents; 3 washout closet, insufficient head to purge lower basin; 4 wash down closet, continuous water movement with minimal loss of head; 5 syphonic closet, supplementary water jet for flushing action; 6 water saving syphonic jet closet, contemporary wash down action modified for reduced water consumption (courtesy of Eljer); 7 vacuum closet, vacuum suction of bowl contents as water plugs (courtesy of Colt industries) [...]" from Progressive Architecture 7:75, p.73.

[andreasangelidakis]

Tumbleweeds Catcher, Gianni Pettena, 1972

[phokaides]

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phokaides:

Metabolic House on Flickr.

Key to the Metabolic House:

A Recycling Chutte / B Mulch Processor / C Mulsch Collector / D Mulch Pickup / E Mulch / F Paper/fuel processor tank / G Furnace-boiler / H Piped-in biodegradable detergent / I Water recycling and distilling system / J Paperless toilet / K Vertical conveyor / L Horizontal conveyor / M Pollution control filters

by William Stumpf, 1989 Published in Lupton, Ellen, and J. Abbott Miller. 1992. The bathroom, the kitchen and the aesthetics of waste: a process of elimination. Cambridge, Mass: MIT List Visual Arts Center.

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#kamworkshops2011: Setup for final presentation 

See twitter feed and photos.

[berlinfarmlab-blog]

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The Value of Garbage

Through the condition of the current global financial crisis, alternative concepts of “economy” challenge the obvious values of things today.

At this stage the notion of waste determines from one side what remains exterior to the current value system and on the other hand, identifies/conditions precisely the stability of the current value system’s interior and its adequacy. Everything is defined through a process in which waste, from the one side, shows the limit of the world economy (representing an area outside it), while, from the other -somehow - the waste identifies the internal space of this economy, organizing the financial systematic order by an idiosyncratic negation.

What may be an architecture of waste today? What can be a product of waste? This question will determine an architectonic investigation at this year's workshop. We encounter efforts to find a new place for waste in today's economy; waste has already become important and we are already surrounded by rhetorics of waste, recycling strategies, sustainability discourses: waste remains a constant reference gaining more ground and its performativity in contemporary culture is usually ascertained as based on "obvious facts". Any waste seems to be worthy of our attention, and also as defeating the self-evident character of the value of garbage, based too on idealizations. Architecture’s growing systematic approach to waste also seems to depend on idealizations of the concept of nature and unthoughtful political rhetoric.

With the emergence of waste as a thematic priority, the Center for Mediterranean Architecture’s 10th workshop for summer 2011 aims to re-examine or re-invent a role for architectural theories in the current crisis in order that they result from its controlled bankruptcy. The reconstruction of the theoretical conditions under which waste is shown asks for an explanation of its symbolic power. Architecture tends to appear more and more as evidence of the correct use of garbage. But it needs some confirmation of the value of non-waste to confirm the value of the conversion of waste into a valuable species. The question of the workshop will be: how, through an investigation about waste, strategies of valuation can be organized today? In this process of valuation, is it possible to talk about the product in a way that shows that even the value of waste turns into a fantasmatic waste of precious material? Through which architectures could we avoid an idealized “hidden narcissism of waste”? How could we reconsider new values for architectural production out of new waste strategies?

KAM workshop 2011 produce elementary constructions out of waste and design projects that will be exposed as usual in the Center of Mediterranean Architecture headquarters in the Venician port of Chania, Crete. A lectures program runs in parallel to the design seminars.

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athens recycling people 2012 #thevalueofgarbage