Basurama: a framework for designing collectively with waste

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Basurama (trash-o-rama) is a non profit organization based in Spain that has been experimenting with different approaches to waste over the last decade. It has developed a framework to create projects that provide a better understanding of waste as a resource, and raise awareness of waste production. These projects take shape in many different ways, such as workshops, public art interventions, maps or data visualizations, and work with a wide range of stakeholders, ranging from neighborhood communities and local artists to municipal governments. Across all the different kinds of projects, participant-users take active part in the search, selection of waste, as well as in the collaborative process of design and construction. Through practice, participants become aware of the implications of using waste as a source material: properties, availability, and transportation. The process changes the way designers and communities approach the design project, and provides a better way to understand how to work with what already exists, be it abandoned public space or leftover materials. Among many other activities, Basurama’s practice has been centered on workshops, that last 2-4 weeks, to plan, research, design and construct. In that short period of time, Basuramas’s team connects with local agents to understand their needs and develop a site specific project. Local materials and techniques are used to enable the appropriation of the project by local actors and allow its replication. The proliferation of industrial waste, like car tires or pallets, allows the reproduction of these techniques across countries and certain reuse methods have been developed. Due to the limitations of a short intervention and, in order to understand and provide this experience to others, we thought it was a good idea to analyze in detail how this process was. As a Basurama member I felt the need to extend this kind of reuse practices beyond the scope of our own projects and to conceptualize the work that had been done. These projects work both as a prototype and a ‘hands on’ method to train locals to build their own environments. This paper is an analysis of the 2-4 week long workshops that Basurama has been developing abroad. It will use as a case study the group of interventions in Latin America from the RUS project, specially RUS Lima. We have found that to achieve environmentally responsible processes that reuse materials, it is fundamental to take into account the limitations and locations of materials and the qualities and possibilities of the selected space. That would be a bottom line for almost all reuse projects. However, to design and construct collectively and allow the appropriation of the project by local agents they must also be included in the project since the beginning, as a fundamental variable for the long term success.

Transcript of Basurama: a framework for designing collectively with waste

Basurama: a framework for designing collectively with waste

Pablo Rey Mazón. Basurama.basurama.org

Contents, unless noted, by Basurama under license: Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Unported.

April 3rd 2013Cambridge, MA, USA.

Cultural Agents Initiative Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

Read full paper at http://basurama.org/txt/basurama-a-framework-for-designing-collectively-with-waste

Matthias Kabel. CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Establish a framework to work collectively with waste.

Basurama: a framework for designing collectively with waste

April 3rd 2013Pablo Rey Mazón. Basurama.

Cultural Agents Initiative and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

Waste is a powerful affordable resource.

Working collectively requires:Listening to the others needsTaking time, location, material constrains in account

Basura = trashama = love-orama = wide view of

Basurama = wide view of + love trash

1. What is waste?

2. What can we do with waste?

3. How to work collaboratively with waste?

1. What is waste?

Natural resources that have been wasted.

Waste is a resource in the wrong place.

Things that have lost their name.

“The process by which something is turned into trash can be described as a process of disqualification: things turn into trash when their service makes them lose the properties that described them as these or those things, and so on and so forth, and turn only into that "thingness", fluid and without attributes, that accumulates in trash tips and whose regeneration depends, we could say, on acquiring their lost properties again”.

José Luis Pardo

Whatever is tagged as waste.

#Waste

Whatever is tagged as waste.

#Waste

Whatever is tagged as waste.

#Waste

Whatever is tagged as waste.

#Waste

Whatever is tagged as waste.

#Waste

"Through the garbage collection system of Mexico City it is possible to make an accurate radiograph of the entire political system of the republic, its power relations, their corrupt situations, etc.."

Héctor Castillo Berthier

Waste is information.

"Through the garbage collection system of Mexico City it is possible to make an accurate radiograph of the entire political system of the republic, its power relations, their corrupt situations, etc.."

Héctor Castillo Berthier

Waste is information.

Recycling vs

Upcycling/downcycling

Recycling vs

Reduce Reuse Recovery Repair

Rehabilitation

Waste is a relative concept.

Waste doesn't exist.

Waste has many scales/sizes/shapes.

Waste = People that work with waste

Waste picker, Cambridge MA, 2010

1. What is waste?

2. What can we do with waste?

3. Working collaboratively with waste?

2. What can we do with waste?

A. Analyze + Visualize

B. Reuse

A. Analyze + Visualize

Multimedia approach: from objects to landscape

Trash Safari. Madrid, 2005

You are what you throw away. Benicassim, Spain. 2007

You are what you throw away. Benicassim, 2007 with Iris Giménez Gil

Waste Packaging Index. Berlin, 2012 with Dietmar Offenhuber

Waste Packaging Index. Berlin, 2012

Waste Packaging Index (WPI) = Packaging

Total Weight of the product

Waste Packaging Index. Berlin, 2012

I M30. Madrid 2006 (Yo amo M30, with Areaciega and Sauro Pixels ♥

How to visualize Madrid's Big Dig?

I M30. Madrid 2006 ♥

Video trailer YO amo M30 http://youtu.be/hCpepJFR8rE

I M30. Madrid 2006 ♥

I M30. Madrid 2006. Video trailer 2 http://youtu.be/n7Y48k8TrV8 ♥

6000km.org. 2006-2012

Urb. Francisco Hernández. Seseña, Toledo.

Ciduad de Valdeluz. Guadalajara, Spain.

6000km.org + meipi.org/6000km 2006-2011

6000km.org 2006-2011

PAU Ensanche de Vallecas.

PAU Ensanche de Vallecas.

PAU Ensanche de Vallecas. 2013

PAU Ensanche de Vallecas. 2013

PAU Ensanche de Vallecas.

Weymouth. MA. USA

http://mapknitter.org/maps/saugus-incinerator-landfill

http://basurama.org/transtrash/2011/10/19/saugus-ash-landfill-map/

http://basurama.org/transtrash/

http://meipi.org/cambridgewaste

B. ReuseReusing materialsand public space

Juego Chachi. Leandro Lattes. 2005

Juego Chachi. Leandro Lattes. 2005

Spermöla 2004, 2005, 2006

Spermöla = Yard sale in public space

Spermöla 2004, 2005, 2006

Free Shop. Manresa, Spain. 2010

Free Shop. Manresa, Spain. 2010

3. Working collaboratively with waste?

RUS RESIDUOS URBANOS SÓLIDOS

URBAN SOLID WASTE

RUSA series of chained projects developed by Basurama and the local cultural-social collaborators of every iteration of the project.

Every time the project ended with an action or intervention in the public space, usually degraded, and was centered in working urban waste (Basurama 2011).

Funded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) through the Red de Centros Culturales de la Cooperación Española in Latin America.

Timeline of a RUS project

1. Research trip-Materials-Techniques and tools-Intervention spaces-Urban conflicts-Contact local agents: artists, neighbors, municipality.

2. Review information and pre-design -Establish a local main collaborator

3. Intervention trip-Production: materials, tools.-Design and co-design: iterations depending on negotiations, materials and actors-Construction: Workshop and prototype with locals-Action/intervention/installation-Unmount.

RUS is based on:

-Reactivation of public space

-Local community

-Waste

-Reuse

Public Space

-In danger/threaten-Inadequate or poor maintenance-Privatization-Lack of use-Abandondment

Local Community

-Wide range of stakeholders-Different involvement:

punctual support to full Involvement

Waste

-Source of information-Low cost-Location: harvest map-Value vs Price

Reuse

Ubiquity of industrialized products

RUS Asunción. Paraguay. 2008 with Sonia Carísimo and Francisco Tomboly

RUS Asunción. Paraguay. 2008 with Sonia Carísimo and Francisco Tomboly

RUS Asunción + Varsaw 2010

Varsaw 2010

RUS Buenos Aires. Todos somos cartoneros (We are all waste pickers) 2009

RUS Buenos Aires. Guide to create cooperatives. With Eloisa Cartonera.

RUS Buenos Aires. Guide to create cooperatives. With Eloisa Cartonera.

La ciudad de los niños. Cabanyal, Valencia (2009) with Arquitectura se mueve.

RUS Córdoba. Tejedoras Urbanas (Urban knitters) (2009) with Quinua Photos: Quinua

RUS Córdoba. Tejedoras Urbanas (Urban knitters) (2009) with Quinua

Video: Juan Andres Mancuello http://youtu.be/v3uM1cNpOMc

RUS Córdoba. Tejedoras Urbanas (Urban knitters) (2009) with Quinua

RUS Mexico City. 2008

Car Tires

RUS LIMASELF MADE AMUSEMENT “GHOST TRAIN” PARK

Initial research

Harvest map

Uncompleted Metropolitan railway.

Foto: Sara Fernández Deustch

“El Tren fantasma” (ghost train)

-Elevated metropolitan railway project-Started construction in 1986-Opened 10km in 1990. -For 20 years abandoned elevated infrastructure.-Promised public transportation system that never arrived.

Collaborators

-Christians Luna (visual artist)-Sandra Nakamura (visual artist)-Camila Bustamante (graphic designer) -El Cartón (architecture students collective) -C.H.O.L.O. (artist collective based on Lima suburbs)-El Cartón (architecture students collective) -Playstationvagon (graffiti writers/urban artists)-El Codo (graffiti writer/urban artist)-Motivando Corazones collective (non profit organization) -María Pía Raschio and Diego Alonso -Rossell (artist)-Local group of boy scouts-Surquillo District Municipality

RUS Lima, Peru. 2010

RUS Lima, Peru. 2010

Aucahuasi. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tren_Eléctrico_viaducto_inconcluso.jpg

C.H.O.L.O.

Parque Autoarmable (Self made playground)“Nueva Esperanza” in Pachacutec, Ventanilla.

Developed by C.H.O.L.O., Christians Luna y the community of sector C1 de Pachacutec

Photos: C.H.O.L.O.

Parque Autoarmable Nueva Esperanza. Lima Photos: C.H.O.L.O.

… and now, what's going on in Basurama?

Autobarrios. San Cristobal de los Ángeles, Madrid. 2013

Long term involvement.

Real estate bubble in São Paulo. Brazil. 2013