The Afterlife of Concrete

Designers are concrete consumers. We engage with this anthropogenic geology as a product, paying little attention to its life cycle beyond design. The ubiquity often misleads us to mistreat concrete, which shapes a broader misperception; however, landscape architects are partially historians. With the power to choose materials and make spaces, we also create history by selecting perspectives and stories.

This project seeks to expose the concrete lifecycle. Hidden grounds of extraction, production and demolition are revealed through “tracing”, to look for the rejected values and lost locality in concrete. Various devices are used to uncover uncharted territories, such as remote sensing, historical record finding, and speculating through observation. Sites disclosed and transformed include a limestone quarry, a former cement works, and redevelopment sites across Melbourne CBD. Working with drawing and mapping, insights at different scales are drawn to construct the design outcome.

The Afterlife of Concrete demonstrates how to design with demolished concrete more creatively and cautiously; a key strategy, “curating the existing,” makes spaces for everyday ceremonial and temporal experiences. By engaging with demolition processes, the project reimagines exclusive zones in transition as sites to grow a resilient relationship with concrete, meanwhile revealing unrecognised heritage.