Reclaiming places
New York’s High Line is a reclaimed, re-used place that attracts thousands of city residents and visitors to stroll in a park-like setting. The High Line was a defunct freight rail on New York’s west side. See their website for more on this fantastic case study in the transformation of neglected space into vibrant place. […]
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CFP: History and Cultural Representations of Human Remains
Call for Papers: History and Cultural Representations of Human Remains Conferences Medical Museums and Anatomic Collections at the Natural History Museum, Toulouse, on 4 February, 2013 Anatomic Models at the Academy of Medicine, Paris, on 4 April, 2013 Exhibiting Human Remains at the Hunterian Museum, London, on 4 June, 2013 Although modern anatomy owes a […]
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Designing a Reuse Symbol and the Challenge of Recycling’s Legacy
By Max Liboiron The “universal” recycling symbol was designed in 1970 for a competition during America’s first Earth Day. A large producer of recycled paperboard, the Container Corporation of America, sponsored the competition. The winner was Gary Anderson, an urban design student in California, who said that he designed the symbol as a Mobius strip, […]
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Article Alert-Tactics of Waste, Dirt and Discard in the Occupy Movement
Currently “Tactics of Waste, Dirt and Discard in the Occupy Movement” is published as a forthcoming article in Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest, but will soon be part of a special issue on the Occupy movement. From August until September, the special issue will have free and open access. When […]
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A Companion for Sewer Catastrophes
By Max Liboiron Sewers are the most expensive and expansive urban infrastructures in North America. They are underground. They are made of inflexible pipes.They are difficult to access. And increasingly unpredictable acts of nature, from earthquakes to climate disruption, are making the probability of their spectacular, large-scale failure something to take note of. A couple […]
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CFP: Re-Cycle Architecture
Publication Deadline: 2012-07-18 (in 18 days) Boundaries introduces a call for papers on the following subject: «Re-Cycle Architecture». Recycle has to be intended here not as a new vague for aesthetic or marketing trends, but as re-use, “life cycle extension” for materials and objects. This new cycle affect the materiality of the existing, its functions […]
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Philosophia, “No Impact Man,” and the reader of Discard Studies
We have a modest fern garden on the side of our home. (Curiously, it is situated right in front of the plastic shed that holds my two trash containers.) I am the steward of the miniature garden; I take care of it, I tend to it. This year I’ve given it more time. It is […]
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Communicating Eternity: A Typological Guide to America’s Ephemeral Nuclear Infrastructure
By Max Liboiron We all know waste doesn’t go “away.” We know about landfills, transfer stations, blue boxes, and ocean plastics. We know special types of waste, such as nuclear waste, has similar infrastructure, but imagine that infrastructure is somewhere “away.” Or is it? Repository: A Typological Guide to America’s Ephemeral Nuclear Infrastructure,is a 42-card […]
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OWS vs. City of New York: Leveraging Discard Politics
By Max Liboiron Occupy Wall Street, and specifically representatives of the People’s Library, are suing New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg, its police commissioner Ray Kelly, the Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty, and other City officials in the seizure and discard of 2,798 books during the raid on Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011. If you are […]
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Speaking out of place: First Amendment Rights Area
By Max Liboiron. When visiting National Parks, be sure to note the location of the nearest “1st Amendment Rights Area.” As a reminder, this is the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or […]
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Discard Studies 