Wasteocene: Designing  Our Toxic Commons

Professor Hélène Frichot

Studio Description

Using philosopher of science Donna Haraway’s environmental story “The Camille Stories: Children of the Compost” as a prompt, this studio follows a process of Speculative Fabulation (SF) to imagine a near future of systems breakdown in the toxic ruins of Capitalism, or what can be called the Wastocene. Collective work and co-learning are fundamental to this studio as a practice of commoning. Collaborative groups will sensitively engage with 4 locales across Naarm (Melbourne) that are known for their dirty industrial histories. In our Speculative Fabulation, around the year 2050, communities of 100 members will have settled these Toxic Commons with the primary responsibility of nurturing the well-being of cross-species companions, animal and vegetal. The studio foregrounds a material consciousness, caring with Country, and critical modes of expression to be developed based on foraging, gleaning, and scrounging materials and concept-tools and trading between 4 compositing communities.

Studio Outcomes

Collaboration is fundamental to design; no professional practice survives without practicing skill-sharing and collective care labour. This studio foregrounds design collaboration as a form of commoning, while allowing opportunities for students to expand their individual skill base through sharing situated knowledges. An emphasis will be placed on raising a material consciousness and ethical resourcefulness. A conceptual and creative engagement in Dirty Materialism, Environmental Humanities, Repair Studies, Care Ethics and Feral Ecologies will support participants to integrate design theories with creative practices. Creative Practice Research (CPR) skills will be introduced to support motivated students preparing for self-driven or “open studio” Master thesis projects.

Experimenting with: toxic dérives and environmental storying maps; dirty models; irrational cross-section cuts; diagramming material stoppages and flows; undertaking concept-construction; smooth montages; and analysis of precedent samples, during the first five weeks we will build up a proposal for 5 Toxic Commons. Dwellings for 100 community members, gathering spaces for 400 people during toxic commons festival events, basic infrastructural systems, and cross-species caretaking facilities will form the key components of the design studio brief, with students responding to what they discover on the ground when following the materials and non-human requirements of each Toxic Commons to elaborate further basic support systems.

Participants will design a Toxic Commons that:

-Cares for endangered local species, animal and vegetal

-Accommodates a compost community counting 100 members and a gathering space for 400 people during toxic commons festivals

-Supports a self-sustaining environmentally responsive infrastructural system for water, energy, storage and food needs

-Fosters Speculative Fabulation and experimental modes of design expression by following the flows and circular economies of available materials

Studio Leader/s

Careful critic, process philosopher, and creative practitioner, Hélène Frichot is Professor of Architecture & Philosophy in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning in collaboration with CRAM (Critical Research Association Melbourne) and colleagues at VCA, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne. She is an Honorary Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, UK. Hélène was Professor of Critical Studies in Architecture at KTH Stockholm, leading the Critical Studies teaching and research division (2012-2019), and before that, a tenured academic at RMIT Architecture (2004-2011). As a Guest Professor she has led seminars and supported design studios at Staedelschule Frankfurt (2018-2019). Her research has informed design studio experimentation internationally, from ETH Zurich to Columbia University US, to Paris Malaquais, France and beyond. Her books Dirty Theory: Troubling Architecture (2019/2025) and Creative Ecologies (2018) are broadly read, and she has co-edited peer reviewed journals and edited books that experimentally engage the entanglement between theories and practices in art, architecture, and design. Hélène has delivered design studios and theory seminars for over thirty years across Australia, Sweden, and Germany.

Readings & References

Dzierzawska, Zosia and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes (2021) “Architecture without Extraction,” Architectural Review.

Easterling, Keller (2021) Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World, Verso.

Feral Ecologies https://feralatlas.org

Frichot, Hélène (2019) Dirty Theory: Troubling Architecture, AADR.

Frichot, Hélène (2023) “Dirty Materialism: What Jennifer Knew” Hélène Frichot & Emma Cheatle, Jennifer Bloomer: A Revisitation, special issue, Journal of Architecture, Volume 28, Issue 6, 2023, 996-1021.

Frichot, Hélène, Adrià Carbonell, Hannes Frykholm, Sepideh Karami eds. (2022) Infrastructural Love: Caring for our Architectural Support Systems, Birkhauser.

Frichot, Hélène (2021) “Wastocene: The Dirty Architecture of Progress,” The Architectural Review. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/keynote/wasteocene-the-dirty-architecture-of-progress

Ghosn, Rania and El Hadi Jazairy (Design Earth) (2018/2022) Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment, Actar Publishers.

Ghosn, Rania and El Hadi Jazairy (Design Earth 2023) Climate Inheritance, Actar Publishers.

Haraway, Donna (2016) “The Camille Stories: Children of the Compost,” Staying with the Trouble, Duke University Press.

Hromek, Daniéle. “Indigenizing practice: What can non-Indigenous designers do?” Architecture Australia, 2023.

Hutton, Jane (2020) Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Materials Movements, Routledge.

Le Guin, Ursula (2022) Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, with a foreword by Donna Haraway, Ignota Books.

Malterre-Barthes, Charlotte (2025) A Moratorium on New Construction, Sternberg Press.

Malterre-Barthes, Charlotte and Dubravka Sekulić (2023) “Frameworks for Curriculum Repair,” The Great Repair: Politics for the Repair Society, ARCH+ Journal for Architecture and Urbanism, 182-188.

Pignarre, Philippe and Stengers, Isabelle (2011) Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell, Palgrave Macmillan.

Stengers, Isabelle (2015). In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism. Open Humanities Press and Meson Press.

von Schantz, Miriam and Hélène Frichot (2020) “On the Irrational Section Cut,” in Hélène Frichot with Gunnar Sandin and Bettina Schwalm, eds, After Effects: Theories and Methodologies in Architectural Research, Actar, 2020.

Tsing, Anna Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena and Feifei Zhou (2024) Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene, Stanford University Press.

Tsing, Anna Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, Nils Bubandt (2017) Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, University of Minnesota Press.

Tynan, Lauren (2021) “What is relationality? Indigenous knowledges, practices and

responsibilities with kin,” Cultural Geographies, vol. 28, 597-610.

Schedule:
Monday 2pm-4pm
Thursday 2pm-6pm 

Off-site Activities:
TBA

Contact Handbook