Geopolitics of Waste
Studio Master S3 – KU Leuven
KU Leuven – Faculty of Architecture (Brussels Campus)
Master Design Studio (Semester 3)_ 2025-26
Engagement: Urban Cultures
Tutor: Jeanne Autran-Edorh – Studio NEiDA (Co-Founder & Principal Architect)
Language: EN
Cover image: Serge Attukwei Clottey, Yellow Brick Road, Accra, 2019.
INTRODUCTION
Contemporary ruins, labour exploitation, industrial overproduction, and waste colonialism: the overconsumption of goods, especially in the global north but also in rapidly industrialising economies, has led to a crisis of surplus. Waste is not neutral: it is political, cultural, and deeply unequal, and its consequences are often sealed within other geographies, particularly in the global south. At the same time, waste is part of daily life: packaging, clothing, food, and digital devices connect our everyday use to global geopolitics. Students will be asked to draw from their own experiences and contexts as an international group to collectively map the global geopolitics of waste and uncover design opportunities. The studio will also look at existing informal design practices and art forms around waste, examining how communities already transform discarded matter into cultural expression and survival strategies.
As architects, we are agents of transformation, and our discipline is deeply entangled with flows of resources, labour, and power. This studio does not treat waste only in the literal sense of recycling, but rather explores the geopolitics behind it: questions of power imbalance, environmental inequalities, the impacts of waste management, and the histories of waste colonialism. We will investigate how waste, particularly from industrial fabrication ( packaging, cardboard, plastics, textile, organic, chimical…), can be understood not only as residue but also as a lens to interrogate global systems and as a starting point for critical and creative design thinking.
We will ground this inquiry in real-world cases such as the e-waste dumps of Agbogbloshie in Ghana, the textile mountains of Kantamanto market in Accra, the Dandora dumpsite in Kenya, the coffee waste chains in Latin America, and the electronic and plastic waste landfills in India and Southeast Asia.
These examples reveal how the material excesses of the global north are externalised and imposed on the global south, shaping cities, landscapes, and everyday lives. In Brussels, these global questions find echoes in local contexts: surplus textiles circulating through Les Petits Riens/Spullenhulp, packaging and household waste flows processed by Bruxelles-Propreté, and the contested Canal Zone where industrial infrastructures and informal economies meet. By linking the global south with local Brussels realities, the studio situates design work at the intersection of planetary waste politics and urban practice.
The studio is structured in four chapters: Status Quo, Cross Pollination, Transformation, Implementation, each one deepening a different layer of inquiry and practice, and concluding with an exhibition and small collective publication.
In Status Quo, students begin by questioning dominant narratives, uncovering the political, economic and ecological realities behind waste streams. Cross Pollination pushes them to compare and exchange knowledge across topics, and to translate research into maps and infographics that reveal hidden networks and inequalities. Transformation is the moment of experimentation, where students prototype new material or spatial strategies and test how waste can become an active agent in design. Implementation brings the work into dialogue with place: students define a specific site in Brussels to situate their proposals, ensuring their visual and material outcomes resonate with urban realities.
Together, these chapters combine research, critical visualisation, and prototyping to address both the geopolitics of waste and its architectural potentials.
METHODOLOGY & SEMESTER STRUCTURE
1) STATUS QUO (Weeks 1–2)
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- Introduction to waste geopolitics, inequalities, industrial cycles and the esthetics of waste (in art and fashion).
- Exercise: Individual Collage – each student selects one industrial or organic waste item and produces a collage visualizing its lifecycle. (digital or analog)
2) CROSS POLLINATION (Weeks 3–4)
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- Students pair up around related waste
- Exercise: Mapping & Infographics – trace the industrial and geopolitical flows of waste
- Deliverables: map + infographics.
3) TRANSFORMATION (Weeks 5–8)
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- Material experimentation workshops: students test prototypes using their waste
- Questions: How can this waste become part of a circular process? How can it be reimagined as architectural?
- Site visits and exhibitions in the region of Brussels
- Deliverables: research model and material
4) IMPLEMENTATION (Weeks 9–14)
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- Students return to their original waste theme and choose a site to implement their idea in
- Deliverables: Poster collage, model (scale 1:50-1:10), prototype (scale 1:1).
>>> Final outcome: Public exhibition and collective publication.
Baloji, DRC, Still from ZOMBIES, 2019, Courtesy Baloji
REFERENCES – ARTISTS
Ibrahim Mahama / Alexander Brodsky / Theaster Gates / Baloji / Fabrice Monteiro / El Anatsui / Romuald Hazoumé / Serge Attukwei Clottey …
READING LIST
Caroline O’Donnell – The Architecture of Waste: Design for a Circular Economy (2020)
Katie Treggiden – Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (2020)
Keller Easterling – Extrastatecraft (2014)
Sarah Newman – Unmaking Waste: New Histories of Old Things (2023)
Ekow Eshun – In the Black Fantastic (2022)
Mami Kataoka & Massimiliano Gioni– The Art of Recycling in Africa (2007)
Octavia Butler – Parable of the Sower (for speculative imaginaries and environmental futures)
Rotor DC – Diverse publications
Studio NEiDA – Out of Fashion, Catalogue 24th Triennale di Milano (2025)