Landfill Reforming

Landfills can be seen as a type of lost nature in the process of urbanization. Due to their particular function, most of the landfills are remained as "no man's land" without other forms of human occupation. Closed urban landfills often become an extraordinary part of urban landscapes. After the end of dumping, most landfills in the urban areas will be capped by a layer of soil and covered with some vegetation and turfs, to prevent further environmental pollution caused by leachate and gas leakage. The shape of engineering-capped landfills are often rigid, which can be described as exposed flatness on the top and steep slopes around the sides. Normally, mountains in the urban areas will function as a climate regulator and play a significant part in the regional ecological chain—for example, the Namsan in Seoul and Blue Hills in Boston. Nevertheless, the landfill mounts, even though prominent in elevation, the rigid configuration largely limited their ecological and climate regulating functions.

This project is about rewilding engineering-capped landfills into both ecological and environmentally friendly sites. By testing out the relationship between different types of landforms and climate factors, such as solar radiation, wind, and water content, the topographic strategies will be applied to reform the urban landfills into orographic form with adapting microclimate environments.