For more drawings and content please visit our presentation: https://youtu.be/v_CaaYp8Q7Y
Rio de Janeiro’s waste crisis is defined by the hyper-accumulation of waste in landfills and waterways, intensified by a hybrid system of governance in which militia control coexists with the state. These armed territorial groups shape everyday life by seizing land and monopolizing essential services such as water, cooking gas, and internet access.
Waste to Value moves from top-down models of waste management, instead proposing a neighborhood-based, decentralized, and malleable urban strategy that reimagines waste as the engine for social, economic, and environmental transformation.
By empowering people to serve as the infrastructure of this alternative system, the project builds collective capacity to challenge extractive powers and reclaim agency and stewardship over their lived environment. Using the Sarapuí River as a pilot site, its design adapts to local power dynamics, employing varying degrees of visibility and embeddedness depending on the intensity of territorial control in neighborhoods along the river.
