Assistant Professor Fionn Byrne has added a chapter to the edited volume Waste Matters: Adaptive Reuse for Productive Landscapes. The publication presents a collection of design ideas, essays, interviews and interventions that engage and reimagine the full spectrum of material and spatial refuse. The book’s contributors are a diverse group of designers who come from a range of creative disciplines and backgrounds, including Sean Burkholder, Joyce Hwang, Olalekan Jeyifous, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Dennis Maher, Aleksandr Mergold, and Catie Newell. The volume has been edited by Nikole Bouchard, Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee School of Architecture & Urban Planning, and was awarded the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA)’s 2020 Creative Achievement Award.
In his essay, Fionn Byrne encourages us to give more thought to the current and anticipated ruination of infrastructural landscapes, with a focus on the future aesthetics of our built environment in the wake of the Third Industrial Revolution and the associated Green New Deal. Byrne writes, “two interrelated conditions are clear: decoupling from fossil fuel means building new infrastructure, while left over in the wake of this economic transition are “stranded assets” needing remediation.”
The book was designed by Sonnenzimmer and is available for purchase from Routledge.