Material Worlds - Dip 18, AA School

As all AA-school students were forced to stay at home during the Covid-pandemic, Diploma Unit 18 tried to turn this limitation in an advantage by looking not just at the material fluxes in the UK, but at the material fluxes in all of the student’s home regions. Concretely this meant that the students documented reclamation yards and practices in Brazil, China, England, Hong Kong, Italy, Morocco, Norway, Scotland, Sweden and the UAE, exploring the entire material reuse ecosystem where they live: the laws, industry regulations, government policies and incentives, the key institutions and players, academic research projects and NGOs, the activism and the advocacy for circularity in the building industry.

Scenes from these different worlds of reuse were captured by means of a set of documentaries that can be watched on the Dip 18 YouTube channel and that have been condensed into one video (see below). Interviews with different sorts of stakeholders have been bundled in a publication that can be downloaded at the bottom of this page, and the visited reclamation yards are published on the Opalis sandbox.

Consequently, the students intervened in their local eco-system by means of a well thought out project, in terms of its programmatic set-up and its design: an architectural project as a case study, a rescue/stimulus package for a neglected or wasted material, a hands-on DIY home improvement project whereas specific material reuse is put into practice, the promotion of a particular regional (or vernacular) practice, a communication or educational campaign, etc. For a peek of the results, check out the Dip 18 AA-School webpage here.

 

A project by

Aude-Line Dulière, James Westcott, Arne Vande Capelle, Tristan Boniver

Academic year

2020 - 2021

Student team

Igor Gola, Frida Østby Hansen, Amaya Hernandez, Jianghai Hu, Sorana Mazilu, Iris Meng, Alex Mitea, Shubaib Mohamed, Ele Mun, Alice Nobel, Nikitas Papadopoulos, Jihane-may Slaoui, Phillip Tsang

Downloads

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