The Afterlives of Excavation:

Abstract:
A cluster of new geologic monuments have recently emerged on the urban periphery of Stockholm. Looming piles of broken rock, freshly ejected from the depths of the earth. These vast accumulations of material are the excavated excesses from the construction of the new Stockholm Ring Road — an infrastructural mega project linking the north and south of the city via a six-lane, eighteen kilometre tunnel beneath lake Mälaren. This project alone has produced nineteen million tons of tunnel waste, or entreprenadberg as it is commonly referred to in Swedish. As landscape architect Jane Hutton remarks, the act of building produces "reciprocal landscapes" as design decisions and material choices inevitably cause unintended and unacknowledged large-scale territorial consequences. The promise of smooth traffic flows, reduced travel times, and extensive socio-economic benefits tied to the realisation of this Stockholm motorway is contingent upon the displacement, organisation, and relocation of vast quantities of earth. Blasted rock that must be sorted, transported, stored, crushed, and eventually utilised in other construction projects, as building aggregates, road-base, or fill material.

This paper sets out to "follow the material," tracing the entangled trajectories of extracted rock as it is transformed from a fixed state into something that moves — a commodity that circulates within an ecology of utility. Excavated rock generated through construction processes are simultaneously an excess that must be disposed of, as well as a by-product that can be sold and utilised. Using Stockholm as a case study, I aim to ask what happens to this material, how does it move, where does it go, and what does it become?

Bio:
Matthew Ashton (1985, Sydney) is an architect and researcher based in Stockholm. He is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT University Melbourne, School of Architecture and Urban Design, and guest researcher at the KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm.