from Landfill, to Landscape

Cleanfill landfills represent a growing challenge in landscape architecture, serving as both environmental liabilities and opportunities for transformation. These landscapes, often overlooked as static and inert, hold the potential to reconnect fragmented ecological, cultural, and material narratives. This thesis explores the re-imagining of such sites as dynamic regenerative spaces, bridging the divide between waste and renewal.

Focusing on the T&T Cleanfill in Ōwhiro Bay, Wellington, this research investigates the landfill within the broader ecological and cultural context of its catchment. As a site shaped by material flows and human activity, it exemplifies the challenges of ecological degradation and disconnection whilst offering unique opportunities to integrate waste reclamation, ecological restoration, and through storytelling influenced design into a cohesive landscape vision.

The research employs a multi-method approach, combining precedent analysis, site investigation, and iterative design to explore the site’s potential. Materials and processes typically associated with waste are reimagined as tools for creating adaptive topographies, biodiversity corridors, and spaces which contextualise culture through storytelling. Strategies draw from global precedents and are tailored to the specific ecological, cultural, and material context of Ōwhiro Bay. The findings propose a layered and evolving design, where terraces and domes shaped by landfill processes support ecological restoration, education, and community engagement. By redefining waste as a resource and a narrative, this thesis demonstrates how neglected sites can transition into places of resilience and connection, where scars of the past form the foundation for renewal.