Radical Reuse

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The research project Material Ecologies of Design welcomes everyone to join the oneday symposium Radical Reuse: Aesthetics, Scale, and Limits. The symposium is free to attend, and basic lunch and coffee will be provided for those who register in advance. Extraction, innovation, and aesthetic desire are powerful forces that have collectively reshaped our world over the past century. This decade must seek alternatives to the consequences of modernization. Recycling and reuse of materials have long been part of design practice, even when historically motivated more by economic than ecological concerns. What historical practices can inspire new, less wasteful design methods? What are the challenges and opportunities when the design field scales up experimental reuse practices into real-world solutions for industry? And how can designers, activists, and communities resist the commodification of waste that is increasingly becoming another extractive market? If design is to move from a logic of mining to one of reuse, it will require a shift toward an ethos of elimination. Designing with extractive materials will not stop overnight, but reducing their consumption requires a transition toward designing without—or even designing out—extractive materials. The symposium Radical Reuse aims to understand design as a densely textured constellation of past, present, and future across changing regimes of value and revalorization. It brings together researchers from multiple fields to discuss the challenges and opportunities of a reuse paradigm. Throughout the day, historians, architects, scientists, curators, filmmakers, designers, and activists will give short presentations with concrete examples of reuse, focusing on aesthetics, scale, and the limits of reuse, in the past, present, and future.

Lecturers