Critic at Large: Lydia Kallipoliti

This talk examined human waste not as an invisible byproduct of urban life, but as a material force that infiltrates air, water, and architectural systems. Challenging conventional resource-management narratives, the presentation argued that excrement is inseparable from the “dirty” physiology of the body and must be understood as part of the ecology of habitation. While postwar ecological models once considered the human inhabitant integral to building systems, contemporary environmental discourse has largely shifted toward a conservationist ethic rooted in scarcity and individual responsibility.

By reintegrating the body’s material realities into ecological thinking, the lecture proposed alternative futures for waste as a resource in urban environments. It revealed how architecture constructs and distributes power through material upcycling, interspecies alliances, and biopolitical systems embedded in infrastructure. Through a critical lens, the talk mapped the relationships—and tensions—between products and by-products, production and consumption, and creation and decomposition, ultimately reframing waste as a generative force capable of reconfiguring spatial and ecological design.