Roslyn Dudas
ARCH-4980.4 | Ted Ngai, Lecturer
UPGRADING WASTE FROM BI-PRODUCT TO RESOURCE
ROSLYN DUDAS
Despite the reality of a declining economy for decades, the perception of opportunity and improved living conditions is continuing to drive population growth in Lagos, Nigeria. This growth combined with a lack of affordable housing and job opportunities, causes the citizens to support themselves through informal economies and sprawl excessively with haphazard development.
The rapid growth has driven an increase in real estate values, making most housing un-affordable, causing families to construct their own single-room homes. This unregulated construction worsens the already poorly maintained drainage system, further aggravating the extensive flooding that occurs twice a year.
As the city of Lagos continues to expand, there is constantly increased pressure on the farmlands to move and expand farther outward. This, in addition to the demand for timber as a construction material, has led to devastating levels of deforestation.
The lack in available employment has lead Lagos citizens to be extremely resourceful.. For example, there is an army of waste pickers that has formed, who work on the landfills isolating the various materials comprising the garbage. Everything is recycled by selling it back to market or industry, except for the food waste.
I’ve explored strategies for taking advantage of this un-used, nutrient-rich resource by implementing a system of compost generation on the landfill. This compost can be given to the surrounding farms in exchange for agricultural wastes, which in turn can be used to produce a new Styrofoam-like material. I’ve then investigated the ways in which this material could be produced by the people of Lagos with the materials and resources they have available. This material can then be utilized by the Lagos citizens to construct homes in a new way that provides an improved form of shelter and frees them from their dependence on timber, a quickly diminishing resource.