Australia is facing a plastic waste crisis. With China no longer accepting Australia’s mixed recyclables, waste management facilities and their contractors have been scrambling to find new markets for the hard plastics they collect from our kerbside.
Albury Waste Management Centre alone receives 4 tonnes of hard plastic per week. Where will this plastic waste end up? Can we possibly recycle it all?
In response to this question, MAMA has commissioned award winning architect Raffaello Rosselli to design and construct an experimental structure to stand in QEII Square over the summer period. The result, Plastic Palace, transforms 20 tonnes of hard plastics in a unique architectural design that engages our local community in this critical conversation.
Raffaello Rosselli is known as the sustainable architect, and challenges himself to embrace discarded and waste materials as potential building materials. Plastic Palace presented many technical challenges as the team worked to find new ways to use this abundant material. The structure represents just 5 weeks of hard plastic collection from Albury Waste Management Management Centre, and asks us to question our reliance on plastic as an everyday material, and the true cost of its production.
Summer Place 2018 Plastic Palace won the Robert Woodward Award for Small Project Architecture in the NSW Architecture Awards 2021.
Summer Place is an experimental architecture project, held in QEII Square in the heart of Albury’s cultural precinct.
Summer Place aims to engage the community in new ways with our public space, as well as providing architects with the opportunity to experiment and be creative with urban design.
