Architecture project. London, 2022.
Waste does not exist in nature. Everything that grows eventually decomposes so new life can flourish. SCRAPSPOTTING seeks a new building method centred around the productive re-use of waste material so our buildings might behave like processes instead of static objects.
The project focuses on the old T.G. Green & Co. pottery factory in Swadlincote, a Grade II listed building, which has been abandoned since 2007. Instead of regarding this building as functionally obsolete, it is given use-value by treating decay as an active participant in its redevelopment. This ‘vibrant process’ frees up material for reuse once decay leads to collapse, suggesting ‘traces of independence or aliveness’ that supersedes the site’s status as a relic. Here, maintenance and restoration are replaced by cultivation as an anarchist syndicate forms around the transformation of the building’s collapsed remains. These are upcycled into conservatories that propagate a rereading of heritage value no longer steeped in nostalgia but rather in rugged materialism.