Raffaello Rosselli: Plastic Palace

When China announced it would no longer accept Australia’s mixed recyclables, waste management facilities and their contractors had to scramble to find new markets for the hard plastics that were collected from kerbsides.

Albury Waste Management Centre alone received 4 tonnes of hard plastics per week. Where would this plastic waste end up? Could we possibly recycle it all?
In response to these questions, MAMA commissioned the award-winning architect Raffaello Rosselli to design and construct an experimental structure to stand in QEII Square over the summer period in 2018.

This resulted in Plastic Palace, which transformed 20 tonnes of hard plastics into a unique architectural design that engaged our local community in this critical conversation.
 
Raffaello Rosselli was known as the sustainable architect who challenged himself to embrace discarded waste materials as potential building materials. Plastic Palace presented many technical challenges as the team worked to find new ways to use this abundant material. The structure represented just 5 weeks of hard plastic collection from Albury Waste Management Centre and asked us to question our reliance on plastic as an everyday material, and the true cost of its production.

Summer Place is an annual initiative, that brings art and architecture together in QEII Square over the Summer months.

Winner of NSW Architecture's Robert Woodward Award for Small Project Architecture.

Plastic Palace was recycled at the conclusion of the installation on 3 March 2019.