The Garbage City

Our site, located in the region of Puerto Lisa in Ecuador, faced one major issue that affected the health, livelihood and economy of its people. The massive piles of garbage that had collected within the estero over several years contributed to the death of the estero’s marine life. Over time, the estero lost its sense of purpose as the people of Puerto Lisa faced land scarcity issues and resorted to reclaiming land back from the estero via stockpiling garbage bags.

Our focus in this project was hence to restore and repurpose the estero by firstly, attempting to clear the present garbage pollution and to stop its continual polluting. By choosing to view the abundance of garbage as a resource and turning it into a useful product, an economy and employment opportunities could potentially be created for the people of Puerto Lisa. After analysing the types of garbage produced within Puerto Lisa, paper was shown to be one of the highest outputs, consisting of 16% of their daily garbage. Therefore, we chose to focus on how the material of paper could be repurposed into a beneficial product, specifically in terms of a building material as the construction industry makes up majority of the work force of Puerto Lisa.

Papercrete, which is a construction material consisting of re-pulped fiber with Portland cement and sand, is also known as fibrous cement and has several advantages over that of standard concrete. Papercrete is much lighter, has better insulating qualities and a lower cost of production. By designing modular blocks and several ventilation block hybrids, we were able to focus on increasing lighting and ventilation qualities of interior spaces within Puerto Lisa.