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Fyllingen

Rendered view of long buildings on tall columns above a green, regrown valley at dusk, a raised walkway between them — A speculative future: living above the regrown ground.

2023

Landfill, ground and a long-term strategy
Bachelor thesis, Bergen School of Architecture

Spelhaugen in Bergen is built on an old landfill, capped with asphalt and parking. Fyllingen asks what happens if you dig it out. The waste is removed, sorted and recycled, and the ground is left to grow back. The buildings already standing on the tip are kept: they rest on long piles, and once the waste that held them in balance is gone, new bracing takes its place. Above the regrowing ground a raised walkway, the lifeline, ties everything together, so people can move through the site without disturbing it. It is not meant as a finished design but as a long-term strategy: proof that there is an alternative to leaving the landfill capped.

Cap land /kæp lænd/, noun. A piece of land where an exceeding amount of ground is covered by asphalt. Hostile to most forms of life, and often designed for cars and other machines. Whatever lies underneath is sealed off, and over time forgotten.

Background

How can the architect restore and take back what cap lands have hidden away? Spelhaugen was planned for a landfill of 5,000 m². It grew to 27,000 m², and then, illegally, to 75,000 m². Today it lies capped under asphalt, parking and big buildings, and none of it can be seen from the surface.

The work began by mapping what is underneath, drawing on archive documents, technical reports and sections through the landfill, to understand how deep it goes, how polluted it is and what it does to its surroundings over time. Alongside it, a series of models tested what kind of place could follow: one that is honest about how it is built, lets you understand it, can change over time, and works with nature instead of trying to control it.

Map of the site with polluted ground marked red where it exceeds accepted levels and orange where it is accepted — Polluted ground: above accepted levels in red, accepted in orange.

Plan of the site with polluted ground marked red and orange, and a row of sections through it — Mapping the invisible: sections through the polluted ground.

Sections cut across the landfill beside a map of the site marking the depth of waste at each point, from 1.2 to 20 metres — Sections through the landfill, with the measured depth of waste at each point.

Map comparing the planned landfill, 5,000 m², the actual one, 27,000 m², and its illegal expansion to 75,000 m² — Planned for 5,000 m², the landfill grew to 27,000 m², and then illegally to 75,000 m².

Two maps of Spelhaugen: the asphalt surfaces cut out on their own, and the polluted ground marked in yellow among the buildings — Asphalt, and pollution.

Covers of technical reports on the Spelhaugen landfill and a planning document, beside Gilles Clément’s Manifesto of the Third Landscape — The project frame: technical reports on the landfill, planning documents, and Gilles Clément’s Manifesto of the Third Landscape. Press to open, and again to zoom in.

Four small models, each captioned with a principle for the place that could follow — In situ: a place that is honest about how it is built, that lets you understand it, that can change over time, and where nature is worked with rather than controlled.

White model blocks beside a square base filled with tangled black wire between two white walls — Challenging the greyness between buildings.

Intervention

What if the cap were lifted? The strategy has three steps.

Nature restoration. The waste is dug out, sorted and recycled, and the ground is left to grow back, returning to its natural state over time.

The structures. The buildings on the tip are kept. They stand on long piles anchored into the mountain, and the waste was what held them in balance, so new supports take its place: cross bracing and diagonal columns.

The new lifeline. A new infrastructure is built, disconnected from the land that was once capped. It gives the structures new uses, and as a new facade appears beneath them, the valley can be experienced from above.

It is not a finished design but a strategy that plays out over the next hundred years.

Three aerial views of the same valley: forest in 1960, buildings in 2023, and a green valley crossed by paths in 2123 — 1960, 2023, 2123?

Three sections: the valley filled with waste, emptied, and grown over with trees — Nature restoration: the waste is removed and the ground grows back.

Black section of the valley with the kept buildings standing on long braced piles — The structures, on new supports. Press to open, and again to zoom in.

Pencil and green crayon sketches of a structure propped in a valley, the valley section and small studies of the buildings — Sketches: holding the buildings up once the waste is gone.

Pencil study of a building held up by a frame of props inside an excavated pit — Conceptual exploration of how to keep the buildings, and what kind of support is needed.

Two long pencil sections of the valley with trees, structures on stilts and a walkway between them — Early sections of the valley. Press to open, and again to zoom in.

Two sections showing a raised walkway connecting the buildings above the ground — The lifeline: a new walkway, clear of the land.

Site plan of the valley in green shading, with paths and building outlines crossing it — Site plan.

Model of timber-coloured buildings standing on thin columns over a green contoured landscape, joined by raised walkways — Model.

Model of a raised platform on a steel lattice leg, a small figure on it above crumpled paper ground — Fragments 2, model.

Two model photographs: a glazed room raised on braced legs, and a lattice bridge with small figures leading to it — Fragments 3: the structures and the lifeline, in model.