Annika Morris

This thesis begins at the Benoni train station, now abandoned and decaying after train services ceased during the 2020 lockdown. What appears to be a redundant site is, in fact, still active - not used by train commuters but rather by pedestrians who cross the tracks daily. A small café occupies the old ticket booth and people pause their journey to buy food and other essentials. The site and surrounds are strewn with rubbish and informal dumping sites, inviting a large community of waste reclaimers. The project adopts a site-first approach, using past and present conditions to inform a new design that will reactivate the station, bringing meaning back to the site.

The design brief does not propose a new train station or recycling hub. Instead, it reimagines the site as a Waste Artist Residency, shaped by the existing conditions and gaps within the station and it’s surrounding context. The project acknowledges the need for a socio-cultural typology in the area while reinstating and highlighting a pedestrian walkway that eases and encourages movement across the site that engages with the new building. The design aims to facilitate engagement between artists and waste reclaimers, not attempting to be a buy-back centre but rather a space where artists can purchase unsold items from reclaimers. Waste is positioned not as a problem but as a resource: discarded materials and building ruins are treated as design informants. The thesis is further grounded in theories of the in-between: nonplaces, liminality, and third spaces, which guide the development of the design brief.

This project seeks to reconnect the existing community to the site while inviting broader public engagement, offering a model for adaptive reuse that reframes waste as a resource.