Geological strata were once formed by natural sediments such as the remains of living organisms, sand, and mud. Today, however, materials processed through human activity — including plastics, synthetic compounds, and industrial waste — are creating new layers upon the Earth’s surface.
This project seeks to reinterpret these materials as “technofossils”: industrial fossils that may one day be excavated in the future. The concept originates from fieldwork at the ossuary in Hallstatt, Austria. Inspired by the practice of naming, decorating, and preserving the bones of the dead as part of a community’s collective memory, this project regards the materials consumed and discarded by contemporary society as a form of “remains,” collecting, wrapping, preserving, and recording them.
The minimal intervention of “wrapping” shifts these materials from objects of consumption into specimens to be passed on to the future. By designing the process of preservation itself, waste materials are given a new skin and a new temporal dimension, and are reconstructed as archives for future generations. This project proposes not only the preservation of individual materials, but also a new system of preservation and archival practice through which the traces of contemporary civilization can be carried into the future.
What kind of strata will we leave behind for the future?
Go Izumita
freelance / ARCHITECT, ARTIST
