Waste

UCL Urban Laboratory and the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies are collaborating during the 2019-20 academic year on a shared research theme, Waste.

An oversized crumpled up ball of newspapers sits on a gallery floor

UCL Urban Laboratory and the IAS are committed to thinking across the arts, humanities and social sciences – and bringing engineering, planners, architects, hard science and the Medical School into the conversation with the arts, humanities and social science. Our new collaborative theme of Waste is open to the widest possible interpretation and is assumed to address the concerns of many disciplines and departments while providing a frame for thinking across or even bypassing entrenched or established modes of thinking.

The conversations we have been having around the theme have included the following concerns:

wastelands, waste dumps, no-go areas and washed out zones, land laid waste, disused space, space abandoned or unloved, uninhabited and uncultivated, overgrown or desolate, watery waste, space laid waste by damage/design, environmental/ecologies of waste/space, spatializing waste, land-fill and land left, leakages and spillages, poisoned landscapes and toxic fall out, weeds and wild growth, international politics of waste, transporting waste, geographies of consumption and rubbish

lifecycles of buildings and sites, atmospheric waste and pollution, waste management planning, waste and density, energy waste, waste and urban/building design, urban wastelands, demolition/destruction waste (e.g. through fire) and urban contamination/regeneration, waste and regeneration

time wasting, spare time, squandering effort and energy, using up time, spoiling or spilling time, life-wasting, wasting away, degeneration and decay, the ravages of time, the uses of time

useless expenditure, rampant consumption, squandering and seduction, throwing away, used up stuff, writing off, built in expendability, economies of waste, consumer culture, excess, extraneous commodities and surplus stuff

decay, disease, wasting away, waste matter, secretions and emissions, bodily waste (blood, sweat, skin, excrement, snot, pus, urine) shedding and peeling, oozing and emitting, pouring and secreting, unsuccessful organ transplantation and tissue regeneration, recycling bodies – burying, incinerating and composting

rubbish and rot, throwing out, throwing away, wear and tear, decay, left-overs, refuse, uselessness, by-products and binned goods, putrefaction, literal waste – garbage, excrement, detritus and trash, refuse matter; unserviceable material, remainders, useless by-products, unsaleable stuff, dangerous waste – pollution, carcinogenic and radioactive matter, poisoning – and its psychic and physic consequence

repurposing, recycling, re-using, transformation, treatment and technology, repair and reuse, channelling waste – infrastructures of waste – sewage, excremental economies, lavs and loos, the architecture of waste – toilets, recycling plants, building materials and structures from left-overs and salvage, sustainability and harnessing energy and stuff, composting and composing from waste and muck, fermenting and rotting, circular economy and zero waste

societal dregs, those designated as rubbish or worthless, useless folks and expendable groups, the dirty and undesirable, the surplus and vilified, class and caste, labour and livelihoods, waste workers and garbage collectors, waste harvesters and contaminated/infected communities/folks, figurations of filth: rag pickers, street urchins, marginalised groups; unproductive labour, citizens and subjects

brain function and waste, habits of wastefulness, changing behaviour, managing waste, psychic excess, emotions and energies, dirt and desire, scatology, waste and education – consumption behaviour, mass media, information and propaganda, political correctness

obsolescence, malfunctioning, disused matter and materials, digital waste and trash – and its consumption of physical space, surplus and virtual expenditure and excess

Key projects

Playwright Nicola Baldwin has been appointed UCL Creative Fellow, working with UCL Urban Laboratory towards the development of an original piece of work on the theme of 'Waste'
Dr Michael Hennessy Picard has been appointed as a Junior Research Fellow on 'Waste' at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies
Funding has been provided to ten interdisciplinary projects led by researchers from across the university, as part of our open calls

Engage with our Annual Theme

Are you a researcher or a student working on this topic? We would like to hear from you. In return you will recieve occasional updates, event and networking invitations.

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