Het glas dorp (the glass village) is a small initiative which attempts to rethink and reuse waste glass in the city.
The project tries to look at garbage not as waste, but as a local resource (probably the only truly local resource in the city); especially since glass garbage is a systematic, plentiful waste material. The upcycling of glass lets the designing and making ideas to root out of the material itself. Thus the shape of the objects is dictated by whatever glass we find around.
Through this approach we discover that creativity grows out of limited resources, rather than abundance.
We collect glass/ broken pieces of glass mainly from building containers which we pass by when cycling in the city. The collecting and reusing of waste glass involves a lot more work, time and creative manoeuvres than if we were to order the glass new; especially since a lot of the times the glass we extract from old doors and windows.
However, we try to contribute at constructing a context where the slow and conscious are winning over economic rationality- speed, abundance and waste.
Building small shelters out of garbage for our friends the plants is a small step towards a collective ‘garbage mentality’, necessary to design our bigger shelters, our own houses and communities.
