How to Waste to Build

Abstract

As our world confronts the consequences of consumerism — waste — informal systems, specifically the informal and improvised systems people create when formal services are absent, are driving innovation. In the built environment, this informal creativity can be scaled into collective and sustainable frameworks. Frameworks that address how the byproducts of our actions and environment can sustain the growing need for structure. This thesis asks, can waste be leveraged as a generative force in the built environment? The site centers on the Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana. As one of West Africa’s largest second-hand clothing markets, it represents a complex, informal, and incredibly adaptive urban system. Tons of textiles circulate here daily, both as product and byproduct, while the market itself operates through constant improvisation, rebuilding, and renewal. The proposal looks at material process, function and labor by addressing the textile waste from the market. By proposing a framework to collect waste and transform it into a building material this thesis imagines the market as a product of its environment. This approach frames waste not as a problem to be removed, but as a valuable, resource that can actively shape physical and social infrastructure. This thesis is driven by the work of Michael Thompson’s Rubbish Theory on the social malleability of waste; Ato Quayson’s Oxford Street on the cultural politics of informal urban occupation; the material practices of Ghanaian artists like Serge Attukwei Clottey and El Anatsui, whose work reveal the embedded histories and identities of waste materials; Mae-ling Lokko’s studies on material labor and value transformation; and Eric Howeler’s Design for Construction, which explores rules sets derived from material behavior. These sources together provide a framework for imagining architecture not just as form-making, but as a responsive, collective, materially adaptive practice.