The Assembly of Trash is an ongoing research project about waste and the built environment initiated in 2008. It responds to the growing privatization of waste and other environmental dilemmas in North America and cities around the globe by critically reconsidering how problems of environmental management have shaped public space and other forms of urban collective experience. Design projects, research, events, and essays examine the urban and built forms of waste management and the spatial politics of its circulation and disposal. Because the burden of visibility rests entirely on workers and communities that live in proximity to facilities, the project reflects on the social and political implications of making waste visible to the public at large.

The website documents writings, curatorial work, teaching and research. As a long-term research project, it allows for new questions and self-criticism about the possibilities and limits of initial points of departure and the underlying assumptions that they make. Indeed, several of the more recent texts included in this website reflect critically on work conducted prior, to seek out more political terrain in the design and analysis of spaces of waste management. Several design and research projects included in the website draw from research conducted in close collaboration with students and colleagues at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning in New York, the Woodbury University School of Architecture in Los Angeles, and the Princeton University School of Architecture.

Contact: Curt Gambetta

contact: cugambetta [at] yahoo.com