Second Place
Next7 Competition
Rawisara Chulerk, Nichakul Kulvanich, Tien Thongvanit, Prab Raktabutr
Thailand
How many things do you throw away each day? Imagine if one day, we throw away too much. So much that over million tons of garbage start pilling up on the streets until we cannot circulate around or even get into our houses anymore. Causing the whole city to evacuate and leave the once glorious town as a dumpsite. The sign of this situation once occurred in Italy during 2008-2010, when 250,000 tons of garbage start piling up on the sidewalks of Naples, caused by the Camera, the local mafia’s influence on municipal waste disposal business as well as bad management of landfills. In 2050, the condition comes back with more extreme result, the officials cannot control the situation anymore and it rapidly take over the whole city, even the area around historically important sites are blocked out, forcing buildings to close down. In consequence, the government decided to close down the fully packed landfill around the city, causing almost a million habitants to evacuate due to the hazardous effects of degrading waste, leaving Naples as the new official dumpsite of Italy. Once the VUOTO landed, the center core’ drills through the waste pile and the streets surface, acting as support for the structure above while also pumping up fresh water for the living facilities. The fans at the pentagonal unit up top then runs the Methane gas collecting system that goes into the combustion unit at the center to generate electricity, as well as filtering the air for the dwelling ring, occupied by the refugees as their temporary living space. Carbondioxide will also be separated for the plantation section, which also helps converting carbondioxide into oxygen for the living units. When the complex is stabilized in place, the crane at the bottom descends to gather the waste from the ground, then move back for waste separation. The crane will then spin to separate biodegradable waste that could be decomposed, such as paper and food, from other solid materials like metal, plastic and glass. The biodegradable waste will be rest in the compost unit for anaerobic digestion, to obtain additional methane gas for electricity generation. Its reduce will then be used as soil or fertilizer for plants in the complex. After the separation, only large solid materials will be left in the crane. It would then descend to the grinder[], which will comminute and separate the waste by materiality. Finally, the result will be compressed into small balls to minimize its volume before releasing back onto the street, ready to be picked up by the official waste collectors.
