About This Live Project

Sheffield Homes is an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) set up and owned by Sheffield City Council to manage council housing in Sheffield. As our client, Sheffield Homes offered us a list of potential project briefs for us to choose from, all of which deal with important issues and concerns regarding the current council housing stock in Sheffield. Our group decided to embark upon developing innovative solutions to address the important issue of waste disposal in flatted council estates. Our hope is that our efforts can offer strong design initiatives on the topic whilst creating awareness and incentive on the importance of recycling and proper disposal of household waste.

Thursday, 23 October 2008

Bridging the Grey

Below I draw upon ideas expressed by James's Ownership of 'waste' post and Al's developing concept of a integrated waste receptacle door.

The current situation (external landing flatted estates):
Issues to re-cap

  • Fly-Tipping is frequent and predictable occurance but essentially uncontrolled, thus Estate officers are forced to check all landings and stair cores.
  • The chutes are inadaquate to deal with large bags and hopper heads are even smaller for child safety concerns.
  • There is a notional 'no-mans land' between the tenants defensible space and the lacking waste disposal infrastructure.

A potential future? (external landing flatted estates):

System interventions
  • Tenants no longer have ownership of the chutes, they are now only accessible for Estate Officers. This removes the need for hopper heads and allows for larger openings, hence bigger bags can be thrown inside. In addition, the chutes themselves could be flexible to receive a variety of wastes (e.g. General waste, glass, cans and paper) providing the correct paladin bin is appropriately positioned below.
  • The waste disposal grey area / 'no-mans land' is neutralised through the usage of a {integrated waste receptacle door} and thus becomes part of the fixed boundary between private and public space.
Though interesting in principle, and as an concept which utilises a variety of the ideas discussed earlier in the group arena, it doesn't really achieve all the hits on the linked diagram I posted earlier. The costing alone of such a scheme would perhaps be enough reason to scrap the whole thing anyway!

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