Waste House, Brighton Grand Parade Campus, UK, 2013
Construction Stage, Completed Project.
Designed and Managed by Duncan Baker-Brown.
Ana Sidorova assisted with construction phase.
Sustainability; a Priority for the Future:
One of the greatest ongoing concerns of our time is sustainability of resources, specifically raw materials. It seems as though not a day goes by where the gritty image of a nightmare, dystopian world afflicted with overpopulation and the onset of various resource scarcities isn’t evoked in some form or another.
One of the consequences of increasing populations in cities is greater waste production.
The Brighton Waste House Concept:
Brighton Waste House is a sustainable development project. As the name suggests, ‘Waste House’ is a building created from construction industry and household waste and figures as part of the University of Brighton’s campus. Built with the help of numerous university students and apprentices, Waste House is “the first permanent ‘carbon negative’ public building in Europe to be constructed from approximately 90% waste, surplus material & discarded plastic gathered from the construction and other industries, as well as our homes”.
More can be found on University of Brighton website:The Brighton ‘Waste House’
Building Process and Achievements in Recognition of outstanding commitment in design and construction
Ana wrote her dissertation for her masters degree from the University of Brighton on the topic of up-cycling with Waste House featuring as the primary case study.
Awards:
Waste House stands as one of the most conspicuous and distinguished examples of up-cycling (the creation of new materials or products from ‘waste’, ‘refuse’ or unwanted and/or useless by-products that are of a higher quality than the original) at a high end and intensive level (a whole building manufactured out of up-cycled waste). As if the fact that the building still stands and remains open to be used by students and other individuals and groups to this very day isn’t enough to support the concept of up-cycling itself, Waste House was awarded a Sustainability Award in 2014 and later nominated for the Stephen Lawrence prize for architecture in 2015 whereby judges from the Royal institute of British Architects commented that it had “sufficient scientific integrity to be taken seriously by the construction industry and just enough political clout to influence recycling policy”. Interestingly, the award was for best examples of projects that have a construction budget of less than one million pounds sterling.
