How can 'waste' be used within architecture and how is its value as a resource determined?

This critical study asks how 'waste' can be used within architecture and how its value as a resource is determined. Beginning with the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, it traces how a culture of 'orderly' design came to treat waste as something to be rejected and hidden, before following the counter-movements — from Walter Stahel's spiral-loop economy and William Rathje's garbology to Braungart and McDonough's cradle-to-cradle philosophy — that reframe waste as food for new cycles of making.

Two built case studies ground the research: the Brighton Waste House, a live educational research lab on the University of Brighton campus constructed largely from household and construction waste, and the Urban Mining and Recycling Unit, which treats the building itself as a temporary store of materials for future reuse. Together they examine how the value of discarded material is determined, and how architecture can move from a linear, cradle-to-grave model of consumption towards a circular economy.