RETHINK WASTE - OVERCOMING STIGMA WITH DESIGN ADVOCACY

Abstract

The word “waste” has a social stigma attached to it. Through the study of architecture, designed with the intent to dissolve the perpetual stigma associated with waste and subsequently be translated as a medium to inform and influence users in sustainable patterns of living, this paper seeks to address the societal preconceptions of waste, wasting and the infrastructure itself. The waste problem is an acute one. Beneath the success of Singapore’s high standard of waste management solutions, there are disparities in the citizen’s psychological relation to waste. Furthermore, with increasing waste generation, Singapore’s current urban waste management model of incineration and disposal method of landfill is examined to be unsustainable and insufficient to meet the demands of the compact city-state within the next 30 years. Through the revelation of the invisible nature of waste infrastructure at an attempt to reconnect people to the realities of waste progressively, this paper constitutes an ambition to celebrate sustainable behavioural changes in the people oblivious to the problems arising from wastefulness. In the architecture discourse, architects have seldom designed infrastructure and its components are preferably designed to be efficient, serving and hidden. As a critique against the many missed opportunities for architecture to be translated as pedagogy to embody and demonstrate environmental lessons to the public, this paper comprises three parts: 1. An analysis and evaluation of existing design guidelines established by overseas government statutory boards on waste infrastructure, 2. Case studies of examples where architecture has been attempted as means of sustainability education, 3. Introduction of a design manual framework for the local context that endeavours to concretise a new attitude towards waste and its infrastructure, coupled with the hope that the level of design appropriated to waste infrastructure will be increased.