EXTINCTION REBELLION HQ

& Clandestine Network of Tunnels for Protests

This project, ‘Extinction Rebellion HQ’, is about the unlikely partnership between two characters: Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, a global environmental movement, and Ken Quantick, a Brighton-based bin man.

Gail has a great love for birds, and has been deeply saddened by the massive decline in bird populations in the UK over the last 70 years. Ken made the press when he turned whistleblower on his employer, Veolia, who are responsible for Brighton’s recycling. They were instructing him to take 8 tonnes of recycling to the incinerator in Newhaven every day. This goes against his principles and he decides to salvage some of the recycling before it goes to the incinerator. He takes it home where he recycles it himself into his own homemade plastic laced bricks.

Having seen the press coverage of Ken’s whistleblowing, Gail recruits Ken to create a network of protest points around Brighton, disguised as bird baths, and connected to the Extinction Rebellion HQ via a series of tunnels. The HQ  is disguised as two normal houses, but underground there is an arch vaulted basement workshop for making the plastic bricks to build the bird baths. Whilst it was being built, the void that is the bird bath skylight was used to lower the machines into the space, and now it acts as a light shaft, as well as being a part of the bird nature corridors created by these bird baths.

Ken brings home plastic from work, deposits it down a shoot into a long, linear, subterranean space, taking it directly to the plastic shredder underground. The excavated material from digging the tunnels is manually crushed so that the pieces are fine enough to be added to a brick mixture. The plastic and the excavated material are mixed together in washing machines, then set into brick moulds. These moulds are then taken via conveyer-belt across to the kiln where they are fired before being taken to their bird bath location via tunnels, and built on location.

DISSERTATION

Between Demolition & Landfill

This dissertation addresses the issue of waste and sustainability in the construction industry. It discusses case studies of people and companies that are at the forefront of change, reimagining waste and the building model in general. From local, small-scale examples like Duncan Baker Brown and his Waste House in Brighton, to more large scale examples like Nightingale Housing, a sustainable development company in Australia, comparing these examples to the standard UK home. It also considers the problems faced when building without virgin materials, and the question ‘Can waste and reclaimed materials look good?’

Link to dissertation – https://www.flipsnack.com/A578D7AA9F7/dissertation-final.html