Wasting Time : a leisure infrastructure for mega-landfill

Abstract

Landfills are consolidating into fewer, taller, and more massive singular objects in the exurban landscape.This thesis looks at one instance in Virginia, the first regional landfill in the state to accept trash from New York City.The landfill will become a starter for Green industrial sprawl, feeding energy back to New york and Richmond through its transformation of municipal solid waste into an energy farm. A singular path cuts into the mound, transgressing the border between the safe environment above and the active and toxic world entombed within the mound.The path alternately reveals this underworld and engages the senses in a series of physical acts: immersion in the bath house, smelling the flowers, ingesting food grown onsite.This transgressive path generates a confrontation between a series of diverse leisure experiences and an active technological landscape within a single gesture. As the ground subsides below the path, the building's position measures the process of decay below.