Wasted space: meanings and typologies of informal trash deposits in the Southwestern US

What value does trash have in a landscape? Traditional Picturesque understandings of landscape aesthetics persist into the 21st century, informing a dominant attitude toward trash landscapes as a degenerate condition. Based on a two-month documentation and mapping exercise of trash in the Southwestern US, this project reframes informal trash—that found outside of society’s formal waste organization structures, the garbage can and landfill—as valuable indicators of human behavior, an Anthropocene archaeology. Informed by patterns in spatial distribution, material sorting, and landscape location, the way in which a trash object has been deposited can be determined and responded to through design. Trash deposits are grouped into one of three categories: Incidental, that which is left behind unintentionally; Intentional, trash deposited in the course of a social-recreational activity; and Abject, trash which has been deposited with other trash in informal massings. By determining what kind of deposition is prevalent at a site, designers can adopt strategies unique to each category that simultaneously preserve the archaeological value of trash while concentrating it into site-specific formal structures that allow the public to engage with it directly and more meaningfully than is possible with the large-scale, distal waste management structures that prevail today.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.L.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Landscape Architecture

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Lemme, Stirling Hobgood

Contributors dc:contributor

• Hays, David L
• Hogin, Lauretta
• Taylor, Chris

• Trash
• Waste
• Garbage
• Landscape
• Landscape Architecture
• Land Art
• Anthropocene

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Stirling Hobgood Lemme

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124464

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F124464