Reimagining E-Wasteland by Ayse Elif Aydinli
"This thesis project proposes a new urban recycling and upcycling centre for e-waste on the site of the existing Apple store in downtown San Francisco’s Union Square.
"The Apple store is one of the most potent symbols of capitalistic materialism, the culture of planned obsolescence, throw-away culture and the aesthetics of consumerist desire.
"The thesis imagines taking over this iconic urban space and transforming it into a new typology of civic infrastructure, one that critically reveals the economic, cultural, and environmental mechanisms that make it function.
"This new civic recycling centre aims to counter the dominant mentality of 'out-of-sight and out-of-mind'.
"It operates from the premise that the buildings that sustain our consumerism should also reveal their operations and infrastructure, and become critical components of our urban environments."
Status: Built
My Role: graduate student thesis project
Additional Credits: Course: Master of Architecture Thesis
Tutor: Neal Schwartz
California College of The Arts
