This or This?

Providence, RI RISD - Storytelling Studio Fall 2022

In collaboration with Tamara Malhas

(Zine in collaboration with Alexis Violet, Jennifer Pham, Tia Miller)

One of the key concepts for our early experiments were the processes of breaking and restoring. In applying these concepts to architecture, we designed a multi-level intervention into the Department of Architecture of Rhode Island School of Design to combat immense amounts of waste produced in the building. We also related the patterns of wasteful production to unhealthy social and academic relationships in modern architectural education.

We started off by designing a manifesto, a zine that would outline every issue regarding waste and unhealthy studio culture in the department, and provide our solutions to each problem posed. On the other side of the zine there were different iterations of posters, one of them titled “This or this?” to show the three steps of our plan: current situation in blue, the near future in yellow and the same space in 10 years, to show the transformation the plan offers. The zine and the project that followed use CMYK color pallette inspired by the ink waste in the printing shop of the department.

We use an analogy of building a model to convey ideas of the change needed in the department. Some of the more social and behavioral propositions include providing adequate time to complete projects, distributing work evenly during the semester to prevent allnighters, comfortable seating and working areas for students, lounges and spaces for rest, negotiation with the students regarding the final deliverables of projects, make using recycled and scrap materials part of the classes, as well as old model upcycling.

Paper Making Process:

1. Shredding paper

2. Mixing with water and moulding

3. Pressing and drying

Materials:

Paper

Wood

Plastics

Foam and foam core

Our architectural intervention proposes a system of chutes running from the top floors of the building (occupied by studios) to the basement which would be converted into recycling and scrap hub. The chutes would be distinguished by color: black for foam, cyan for plastic, yellow for wood and magenta for paper.

The basement, now housign a woodshop, would be partially converted to a materials hub. The chutes would terminate there and the materials would drop into respective boxes for students to pick up the scraps and reuse the materials. Paper, however, would be collected by the students and recycled. The recycling duty is seen as a mandatory activity for students to advance their understanding of material recycling and the waste produced by the production of models. Due to the large number of students, one student would only be required to spend several hours per semester helping the recycling process, but would be able to use the scrap materials and the new recycled paper for free.

The paper recycling process is relatively low-tech and easy, it follows the paper-making practices that could be done at home, but done here at a large scale. The collected scrap paper is first shredded, then mixed with water and moulded, pressed and dried on the large drying rack.

Through these practices of scrap re-use and recycling, as well as with a more mindful attitute towards studio culture and waste, we hope to introduce adjustments to the curriculum and the behavior In our large building scale drawing, we do not only show the system of the chutes collecting materials, or the recycling/materials hub in the introduce a less wasteful and harmful studio atmosphere for the future students. These changes need to be seen as one strategy, because without the behavior of students, the system will not change. the basement, but also incorporate furniture design by our classmates that utilize scraps from printing (bean bag chairs, coffee tables and shades).

The strategy of reusing materials was successfully applied to our own work. We have built the model of the Architecture Department building with the proposed chute system entirely out of scraps found in the building. We documented which material scraps and cut-offs were donated by whom to record the history of materials, as every material has one. All of the materials were sources in less than two hours and ranged from paper and cardboard to wood and acrylic. Thus we demonstrated the large number of cut off material in the building that could be used instead of going to waste.