In collaboration with:
Chair of Construction Heritage and Preservation, Prof. Dr. Silke Langenberg, Reto Wasser
Chair of History and Theory of Architecture, Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke, Linda Stagni

Trash. Waste. Disposal.

As individuals, we coexist with our environment, moving through our daily lives, consuming goods, and generating waste. The proper disposal of waste affects every single person, and it is the lowest common denominator of all of us. «Hiding trash from the public demonstrates appropriate behavior and a sense of social belonging,» writes Alessandra Ponte in a text about the domestication of trash. Waste is a testimony of the imperfect. Nevertheless, there are innumerable approaches to get waste out of sight as efficiently as possible. Hiding is the solution we found to deal with our production of waste. Hiding, in that sense, is seen as a multiple, as it is something that is repeated every day by each of us in different ways.

What kind of environment will emerge, if we stop hiding the waste we produce?
How do objects, that currently contribute to hiding, interact with their surroundings?
What conflicting uses arise, when decentralized processes become centralized?
Who will be affected, by the resulting chaos?

Europaallee one of the cleanest places in the city. A place that stands for «high social, economic and ecological quality», for «high architectural relevance, clear identity and functionality» and for «sustainable enhancement of the area and interaction with the neighbouring city quarters». Europaallee, a place where order and perfectionism were taken to the extreme. This means cleaning early in the morning before waking up, emptying the public bins multiple times a day so that there is no stench, and organizing the infrastructural spaces so that they do not attract attention.

And at the end, this pursuit of perfect cleanliness leads to social separation. A separation between the people who do the care work and those who live or work there. Although there is actually a space where all people meet, namely the waste disposal room. However, this encounter happens in a staggered manner.

This diploma reflects on what happens when the encounter actually takes place, the waste disposal space becomes a common space and begins to eat its way up from below to create new places in the currently generic public space.