Radical Reuse: Aesthetics, Scale, and Limits
Cemonite: Regenerating waste in Norway (designing a geopolymer concrete of mining waste). Photo: OiOiOi (2023).
The research project Material Ecologies of Design welcomes everyone to join the oneday symposium Radical Reuse: Aesthetics, Scale, and Limits. The symposium is free to attend, and basic lunch and coffee will be provided for those who register in advance.
Extraction, innovation, and aesthetic desire are powerful forces that have collectively reshaped our world over the past century. This decade must seek alternatives to the consequences of modernization. Recycling and reuse of materials have long been part of design practice, even when historically motivated more by economic than ecological concerns. What historical practices can inspire new, less wasteful design methods? What are the challenges and opportunities when the design field scales up experimental reuse practices into real-world solutions for industry? And how can designers, activists, and communities resist the commodification of waste that is increasingly becoming another extractive market?
If design is to move from a logic of mining to one of reuse, it will require a shift toward an ethos of elimination. Designing with extractive materials will not stop overnight, but reducing their consumption requires a transition toward designing without—or even designing out—extractive materials.
The symposium Radical Reuse aims to understand design as a densely textured constellation of past, present, and future across changing regimes of value and revalorization. It brings together researchers from multiple fields to discuss the challenges and opportunities of a reuse paradigm.
Throughout the day, historians, architects, scientists, curators, filmmakers, designers, and activists will give short presentations with concrete examples of reuse, focusing on aesthetics, scale, and the limits of reuse, in the past, present, and future.
The symposium comprises short presentations from a diverse group of researchers and practitioners: Grace Lees‑Maffei, Daniel A. Barber, Kate Fletcher, Adam Przywara, Kim Förster, Line Ramstad, Kshitija Mruthyunjaya, Hans Baumann, Christian John Engelsen, Stian Rossi, Daniela Kröhnert, Lukas Allner, Petra Lilja, Matthew Dalziel, Jomy Joseph, and Armelle Breuil.
Provisional Programme (subject to change)
09:00
Welcome by Ingrid Halland (Associate Professor at University of Bergen, NO)
Part I – Aesthetics (histories)
09:30-09:50
Grace Lees-Maffei (Professor of Design History at University of Hertfordshire, UK): Hacking Hands: Radical Reuse in Post-Industrial Craft and Heritage Tourism
09:50-10:10
Daniel A. Barber (Professor of Architecture and Chair of Architectural History and Theory at the Technical University of Eindhoven, NL): How Buildings Dream
10:10-10:30
Adam Przywara (Architectural historian and curator, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Fribourg, CH): Circular Reconstruction: Reuse, Recycling and Landfilling in Postwar Architecture
10:30-10:50
Kim Förster (Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester, UK): On Concrete Reuse: Moving beyond Cement Modernity and Cement Culture
10:50-11:20
Coffee break
Part II – Scale (currents)
11:20-11:40
Line Ramstad (Director of the Oslo Architectural Triennale, NO): What if Nature Comes First?
11:40-12:00
Kshitija Mruthyunjaya (Architect and PhD Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK): Architectures of Concealment
12:00-12:20
Hans Baumann (Designer and filmmaker, founder of Studio HBLA, US): Carbon Permanence
12:20-13:30
Lunch break
13:30-13:50
Christian John Engelsen (Chief Scientist at SINTEF and Professor at University of Agder, NO): Recycling of Construction and Demolition Waste in India: Technical Collaboration between India and Norway
13:50-14:10
Stian Rossi (Architect and Chief Commercial Officer at Cemonite, NO): From Mining Waste to Concrete Solutions
Part III – Limits (futures)
14:10-14:30
Kate Fletcher (Professor of Sustainability at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK): Less of More: Volumes, Systems and Clothing
14:30-14:50
Daniela Kröhnert and Lukas Allner (Architects and researchers, The University of Applied Arts Vienna, AT): From Found to Formed
14:50-15:10
Petra Lilja (Designer and Senior Lecturer in Design at Linnaeus University, SE): Learning with Limits: Diffractive Practices of Design for Radical Reuse
15:10-15:30
Matthew Dalziel (Architect and founder of Matera, NO): Being Tectonic
15:30-16:00 Coffee break
16:00-16:20
Jomy Joseph (Designer and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo, NO): The Plow forgets but the Land remembers: What can design tell us about reimagining human-soil futures
16:20-16:40
Armelle Breuil (Architect founder of ACT! and activist co-founder of ACAN Norge, NO): Unlearning extraction: Actions for change
16:40-17:30
Feedback panel: Challenges and opportunities for history with Carl Zimring, Maria Göransdotter, and Anders V. Munch
Discussions with the audience