All That Is Solid

Abstract

What can architecture learn from a direct confrontation with the material afterlives of modern consumption? All That Is Solid is a series of experiments in reuse conducted during a six-week residency at a waste-processing facility in Philadelphia. Through firsthand encounters with the materials and practices of the recycling industry, the project explores how these othered forms of knowledge could serve as a lens for re-examining architecture’s troubled relationship with its material footprints. Working directly with familiar byproducts from the construction and demolition waste stream, the observations and material experiments presented here advocate for an expanded and more empathetic view of architectural materiality—one that places materials in dialogue with other sites, actors, practices, and value systems that unfold far beyond the building envelope.

Keywords:

• architecture
• materials
• installation
• history
• aesthetics

Acknowlegements

The work published in this paper was produced with the support of RAIR and Revolution Recovery in Philadelphia. Special thanks to Billy Dufala and Lucia Thomé at RAIR for their insights and assistance throughout the development of the project.

The second iteration of All That Is Solid was supported by Space p11 in Chicago, directed by David L. Hays and Jonathan Solomon. The exhibition was made possible with generous material donations from Chicago Logics Service and Future Firm. The installation crew included a devoted team of students and alumni from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northeastern University: Korynn Newville, Nina Shabalina, Biyun Feng, Vince Tong, Emily Weiser, Lanye Luo and Raven Xu.

Notes

Notes

1 Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, Geographies of Trash (New York: Actar, 2015), 16–29.

2 “Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: 2017 Fact Sheet,” Environmental Protection Agency, November 2019, https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-11/documents/2017_facts_and_figures_fact_sheet_final.pdf.

3 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), viii.

4 Bennett, 20–21. For further discussion on assemblages, see Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 17–25.

5 Lorraine Daston, ed., Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (New York: Zone Books, 2008), 9–24.

6 Curt Gambetta, “Inside Architecture: Ideologies of Engagement, from Anthropology to Architecture,” ARPA Journal, no. 4 (May 2016), http://www.arpajournal.net/inside-infrastructure/

7 Patricia C. Phillips, ed., Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art (New York: Prestel, 2016); and Hilary Sample, Maintenance Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 64–68.

8 Michael Thompson, Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 1–12. Thompson’s theory of value transfer provides a useful lens for tracing the relationship between sorting practices and our perception of material worth. He introduced a set of categories for addressing the evolution of cultural objects: transient objects that decline in value over time, durable objects that increase in value, and an intermediate state of zero value where objects are reduced to rubbish. He described the movement of objects between these categories as a continuous and reversible cycle that relies less on the intrinsic physical state of the object and instead on its “social malleability.”

9 Michael Shanks et al., “The Perfume of Garbage: Modernity and the Archaeological/Garbage,” Modernism/Modernity 11, no. 1 (2004): 61–87; and Joshua Reno, “Waste,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World (Oxford University Press, 2013), 261–72.

10 Billy Dufala, cofounder of Recycled Artist in Residency (RAIR), conversation with author, Philadelphia, June 2, 2019.

11 Shannon Mattern, “The Big Data of Ice, Rocks, Soils, and Sediments,” Places Journal, November 2017, https://doi.org/10.22269/171107. See also Jan Zalasiewicz et al., “The Technofossil Record of Humans,” Anthropocene Review 1, no. 1 (April 2014): 34–43.

12 George Bataille, “Base Materialism and Gnosticism,” in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927–1939, eds. A. Stoekl, C. R. Lovitt, and D. M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1985), 51.

13 Charles A. Breskin, “Expanding Fields for Expanded Plastics,” Scientific American 177, no. 3 (September 1947): 119–21.

14 Roland Barthes, “Plastic,” in Mythologies (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991), 97–99. In this essay from 1957, Barthes reflected on the popular appeal of consumer plastics as a manmade enigma that “hardly exists as a substance.” He wrote that plastic is defined by its innate formlessness, “less a thing than the trace of a movement,” whose infinite transformations “gives man the measure of his own power.” In three short pages, Barthes captured the pliancy of the plastic medium to render visible, through its very immateriality, the inflated desires of its makers and consumers.

15 Lydia DePillis, “You Have Never Actually Used a Styrofoam Cup, Plate or Takeout Box,” Washington Post, December 18, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/12/18/you-have-never-actually-used-a-styrofoam-cup-plate-or-takeout-box/.

16 Michael Corkery, “Your Foam Coffee Cup Is Fighting for Its Life,” New York Times, February 10, 2020.

17 Richard Garrison, Nationwide Foam Recycling, interview by author, Framingham, August 2, 2019.

18 Jacob Barron, “SPI, Dart Container Offer Recycling Exit Strategy for EPS Plastic Foam Materials,” Plastics Industry Association Blog, February 15, 2015, https://www.plasticsindustry.org/blog/spi-dart-container-offer-recycling-exit-strategy-eps-plastic-foam-materials; and Ken Santowski, Chicago Logistics Service, interview by author, Chicago, August 19, 2019.

19 EPS Industry Alliance, Take a Look at EPS Recycling: 2016 EPS Recycling Rate Report (Crofton, MD: EPS Industry Alliance, 2017), https://www.epsindustry.org/sites/default/files/2016%20RRR%208.5%20x%2011%20pages_0.pdf; and Manu Chandra et al., Real Cost of Styrofoam, Saint Louis University, November 22, 2016, https://greendiningalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/real-cost-of-styrofoam_written-report.pdf.

20 Stephen Buranyi, “The Plastic Backlash: What’s Behind Our Sudden Rage—and Will It Make a Difference?,” Guardian, November 13, 2018; and Jefferson Hopewell, Robert Dvorak, and Edward Kosior, “Plastics Recycling: Challenges and Opportunities,” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences 364, no. 1526 (2009): 2115–26.

21 Shelly Stallsmith, “Could Pennsylvania Be Next State to Ban Foam Takeout Containers?,” York Daily Record, March 20, 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ang Li

Ang Li is an architect and assistant professor in the School of Architecture at Northeastern University. Her research and creative practice explore the maintenance rituals and material afterlives behind architectural production through site-specific installations and material experiments. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, and the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum in Milwaukee, among others. Li holds a Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture from the University of Cambridge. She is also the founding principal of a research-centered design practice called Ang Li Projects.