THE CITY
AND
THE LANDFILL
A story about material use and the future.
Project background
Material use
Materials use by material types in the period 1900 to 2005, gigatons per year *
We use more and more materials. During the last century, global materials use increased 8-fold, and there are no signs that growth of global materials use is slowing down*.
(If we continue like this we will eventually run out of resources.)
Another thing that is growing is our mountains of garbage, our landfills.
Landfills
When we build new houses or demolish old houses in the city we get waste materials. The masses are transported out of the city.
The deposited masses create new landscapes. Plateaus.
The materials in the landfills are of varying kind, for example; clay, soil, crushed bricks, paper, glass, plastic, metal, gravel, wood and sand.
Nothing lasts forever/The future is waste
Nothing lasts forever.
Everything we build are someday going to be demolished, either trough intentional demolition or decay.
We can reuse material, for example bricks but not forever, in the end all material will become waste.
New materials
The city contains large amounts of materials. Maybe the city has to become a cannibal and start to consume itself in order to create something new. Under pressure the old materials become crushed and creates new materials. A kind of rammed earth material but instead of earth it consists of different kinds of crushed materials from the buildings in the city.
The future
The city is buried with material. The ruins have become material again. The city becomes the landfill.
The idea/location is post ruins- very far into the future. In this future ”waste” is the new material. And the landfills/cities are the new mines.
Then you start digging again.
