After Waste

Beyond Zurich

How do contemporary cities and communities engage collectively with the spatial practices of the waste they produce? We are challenging environmental performance, behavior, and the urgent need to re-imagine circularity. After Waste explores the potential of curbing consumption practices, exploring the power of circularity, producing an urbanization model of regenerating the earth.

Local performance depends on climates, geographies, cultures, and policies, resulting in space- and site-specific strategies. Interesting reference projects are scalable, replicable, and interconnected to other initiatives creating circular models of co-creating sustainable living. We are looking at the metabolism of Zurich from urban large-scale waste management systems, to the microscale of bacteria, breaking down organic matter in rural zones. Using and re-using materials requires new knowledge and competencies in architecture, considering the relationships between communities in the city, periphery, and countryside. An understanding of circular economies, re- and upcycling, material flows, and waste as a second resource is already today paramount to our profession.

We are visiting multifunctional spaces, interviewing a new generation of entrepreneurs, organizations, and makers engaged in innovative economies, waste economies, renewable and regenerative energy production systems, as well as re- and upcycling industries, in and around the city of Zürich.