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Remaking the City

Part 1 Project 2024
Seth Benn
Manchester School of Architecture Manchester | UK
“In the UK, the construction industry accounts for 60% of all materials used, while creating a third of all waste and generating 45% of all CO2 emissions in the process.” (1)

On a strip of land bedside the Mancunian Way, 32 beech trees bound a small industrial estate due to be demolished to make way for the regeneration of Manchester’s Mayfield. The adjacent site, now cleared, was home to Tyrone’s Junkyard.

Inspired by the practice of Tyrone’s Junkyard, this project explores found objects and their possibilities. The project aims to assume ownership of unwanted materials that can be stored and repurposed, demonstrating how discarded items can be woven back into the fabric of the city.

The presented building series continually reassembles through the process of transfer; where waste becomes building fabric, temporarily stored and displayed, to ultimately be selected, disassembled and taken back into domestic and commercial projects in Manchester. With the design of a demountable timber floor-plate system each store is able to grow trees within the buildings. Once the trees fill the inside of the stores, the buildings are dismantled – leaving another resource for Manchester: a woodland.

(1) Wainwright, O. (2020). The case for ... never demolishing another building. The Guardian. [online] 14 Jan. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/13/the-case-for-never- demolishing-another-building.


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