Trash amounts to a huge pile of material with design potential.  From the instant an object is discarded from an individual’s hand, to the centuries a civilization’s debris is built upon by another, design possibilities can be excavated and grasped.  This graduate design studio has explored the vast terrain of waste, its potential as a public work, a public place.

Garbage is a complicated business.  Waste management is piled high with economic, political, social and environmental issues.  It  is a difficult endeavor to understand the technical operations of landfills and the complex hierarchies of waste systems.   This studio grappled with emerging technologies and developing science of dealing with landfills of the past, and waste disposal of the future.

For the first five weeks of the studio, the students (4 architecture, 4 landscape architecture, and 2 joint-degree) embarked upon an intense introduction  to landfills and waste management.  Along with local visits to the project site, the Ivy Landfill, we met with local consultants, representatives of the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, the County Board of Supervisors, and the Ivy Steering Committee.  We tromped through the overgrown debris of the closed Avon landfill, and visited the BFI transfer station in Zion Xroads.  The DUMPsters, as the studio group is affectionately known, also traveled to the Richmond area to see another county-operated facility and a privately-run landfill.  Three full days in New Jersey and New York included a tour of the reclaimed landfills and operating facilities at the Hackensack Meadowlands, the enormous scale of operations at the Manhattan 59th Street Transfer Station, and a vast and sublime experience at Fresh Kills landfill.