ARCHITECTURE IS A WASTE.

McDonnell Reese

mcdonnellarc@gmail.com

630.965.9382

ARCHITECTURE IS NOT GOING TO MATTER IN A WORLD CONSUMED BY WASTE.

In the 2019-2020 year, we shifted our focus to the issue that many students had noticed: no healthy way to dispose of the large number of 3D printed objects that were produced by the Fabrication Lab. Our first step was to work with Terracycle to start recycling the plastic.

We investigated possible procedures for reusing printed material, by grinding the material to a fine powder, and feeding it to a Felfil Evo filament extruder. We were able to create this beautiful gradient filament when using premade PLA pellets.

The team began to study ways that the collected material could be creatively recast and incorporated into our everyday world. Many small scale tests, beginning with only our protective gear, fume hoods, and a toaster oven, we began to explore the capabilities of the medium using material collected from our classmates.

We held a review for our work with several generous faculty, and presented the above studies, and these two prototype furniture items, a stool and a table, with hope to push our work further.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, our next project, the above installation, was never executed. Despite this, our research and work was intellectually valuable and catalzyed many positive changes to the Knowlton School throughout these three semesters; furthermore, it brought us to a mostly unexplored territory which presents a wealth of additional questions to be interrogated. We hope that future students can carry on these ideas and question, and we carry them with us on our journeys.

QUESTIONS TO BE CONTINUED:

Can the material be stretched/mixed in a way that allows flexibility?

Can ground PLA be used as an aggregate in cement or plaster, or mixed together with other recycled materials to strengthen them?

Based off of our final installation and the use of the industrial oven we had planned, could the plastic be melted into thin sheets that could be used for architectural model making?

Can we further advance our progress on recycling filament?

Links - Instagram: https://qzrco.de/bdKTUL 3D Printing Booklet: https://qrco.de/bdKstl

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ARCHITECTURE IS A WASTE.

Published on Sep 15, 2022

mcdonnellarc

After receiving the Coca-Cola Student Sustainability Grant, this Independent Study was formed to examine questions of sustainability of the Knowlton School itself, promote environmental practices, and investigate problems that architecture schools and students everywhere face. In the first of our three semesters, we focused on actions that students can take in their daily lives inside and outside of the studio, creating a messaging campaign, giveaways, and ultimately an installation in the Knowlton main space to be seen by thousands of students. We also created "Reuse Stations" for students to share their extra model materials, and deployed them throughout the school. In our second and third semester, we shifted our focus to the waste created by 3D Printing models. We eliminated 3D printed waste heading to landfills by working with Terracycle and collected the rest to be used in research to find ways to creatively reuse the material, that could eventually be accessible to students to recreate.