Waste Disposal Facilties

Completed in 2001, UN Studio designed a waste treatment facility in

Delft, Netherlands to handle 80,000 tons of domestic garbage and 25,000
tons of biodegradable waste. Recycled waste is processed on site, while
non-recyclable waste is compressed and shipped to incinerators. The
final design attempts to express the function of the facility in a cohesive
whole, which it achieves while also creating a striking assemblage in a
contemporary manner.

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Waste Disposal Facilities.Delft, Netherlands

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Waste Disposal Facilties

Architects Ben Van Berkel and Caroline Bos are known equally well for
their theoretical works as they are for their practice, UN Studio, common
in the Netherlands. An interesting aspect of their built work, especially
for an outsider, is the large amount of infrastructural and industrial
objects in their oeuvre. It is refreshing to see such stimulating design
applied to what is typically merely building, not architecture, bringing to
the fore the processes typically concealed in bland boxed insensitively
placed in the urban fabric.

Waste Disposal Facilities.Delft, Netherlands

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Waste Disposal Facilties

The project consists of a service building, transfer building, weigh space

for garbage trucks, recycling depot and the surrounding landscaping and
infrastructure. The form of the main structure, focused on here, is a thick
plane wrapping from the concrete plinth to become a wall, roof and wall
again before returning to the ground at the transfer docks. This plane
(skin) emphasizes its role as a visible object in its context over spatial
complexity, the latter not appropriate for its industrial role. The skin is
pierced by the truck berths and an exhaust flue, the two ends infilled with
glass and metal.

Waste Disposal Facilities.Delft, Netherlands

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Waste Disposal Facilties

At this facility in Delft, the architects tried to use the project as a symbol
of changing attitudes and practices toward waste processing. For much of
human civilization, waste has been something forgotten or ignored by the
masses until a cause for concern such as an epidemic. With dwindling
landfills and modern standards of hygiene, waste is no longer simply
hidden or buried, instead much of it is processed for re-entry as recycled
goods. This facility expresses that change through its form (dynamic)
and cladding (translucent), but mainly through the actual processes
taking place inside.

Waste Disposal Facilities.Delft, Netherlands

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