Reclaiming the estranged : imagining an architecture of excess

Abstract

A consumer's contact with plastic is typically a brief affair, while plastic's intimacy with the earth is immortal. Our initial fondness fades into estrangement much like a tragic love story. We essentially ghost our waste by disassociating from it entirely. We force it beyond our immediate cone of vision. Our waste streams then veil plastic's journey into landscapes around the world, drawing it further out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Humans have become experts in using, abusing, and discarding earth's natural resources. Our pricking and prodding of the earth coupled with the habitual estrangement of our waste has induced "slow violence" on our landscapes at large (Nixon 2). This estrangement also occurs at the scale of our built environment. Architects are typically situated downstream of material production; this ultimately confines design to values held by the construction industry. Blanketing their concerns for capital in false claims of sustainable building practices, the construction industry deliberately fetishizes material optimization. However, when these building materials reach their expiration date, a collective admiration once again fades into disaffection This thesis reframes plastic waste as a resource rather than a contentious collection of artifacts. By speculating on its life beyond estrangement, this perversion is explored by conflating plastic's lifespan with socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental conditions unique to the Hawaiian Islands. These speculations actively consider site conditions that influence the built environment long after the architect leaves the table by acknowledging plastic as a material that operates across deep time scales. These themes are explored within three parafictions; each follows an oral history of an architectural intervention. In the case of waste, more is more. With that said, we have the opportunity to do what we, as humans, do best. We can use more - not less - around this collective resource of plastic. What if our deliberate estrangement from plastic waste was replaced with a newfound intimacy? What new forms of cultural value could these interventions engender?