radical resourcefulness In these examples of recovering waste, temporary architectures extend the impact of discarded resources and provide those materials with a second life—piggybacking on the waste of prior constructions. Each of these temporary projects illuminates a promising form of social and ecological entrepreneurialism in contemporary architecture. Conceptually and practically, they point toward a more robust form of sustainability than is often considered in practice. They close loops to eliminate material waste, yes, but they also go further than that: by reusing waste, borrowing resources or doing double duty, they leverage one project’s resources in the service of another. In radically resourceful ways, their designers extend the tangible investments of their various stakeholders – clients, builders, designers and communities – across a project’s past, present and afterlife to serve multiple and often underserved constituencies. They demonstrate how, through practices of piggybacking, environmental sustainability might be made to dovetail with social sustainability. What is certain is that any attempt to carry forward the lessons learned from these small, temporary architectures will face significant practical challenges when measured against the demands of larger, longer-lasting buildings. Nevertheless, given the magnitude of present environmental and social crises, we must continue to try. Design experiments like those reviewed here are tremendously promising as ‘generative demonstrations’ 4 providing legible examples of life-cycle design that could help transform industry practices of waste recovery and preemption, and suggest a hopeful future where buildings are made of recycled materials, designed to be disassembled, and planned for extended lives of environmental and social impact. g
4. Dana Cuff. Architectures of Spatial Justice . Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2023. pp 159-187
BRIAN HOLLAND is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Arkansas, and the creator and organizer of the Piggybacking Practices research project, which launched online in 2021. https://piggybackingpractices.com/
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on site review 43: architecture and t ime
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