Stavros Kondeas
A digital archive of curiosities in 
architecture, research, and objects

Based in Montréal, Canada
+1 514 820 7874
stavros.kondeas@gmail.com

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Waste management is often thought of as an isolated process that is removed from the other systems that work together to support the needs of a city. Currently in Havana, solid waste is transported to sites outside of the dense urban core. This externalization of waste creates a large physical distance between the place where waste is generated and the environments that process it.

Specific to Havana’s context is the abundance of organic waste being produced by the city and its inhabitants following the country’s urban farming movement. Much of Cuba’s food needs are met by an integrated urban farming network which still relies on compost and other soil amendments to be imported from producers outside of city limits. Transporting large volumes of waste to urban peripheries is costly, energy intensive, and environmentally negligent.

A small organic waste facility within the Plaza de la Revolutión neighborhood of Havana can process the communities organic waste through a net-positive system. The waste-tower vertically optimizes the processing of organic waste and produces rich soil amendments for the 5 sites of urban agriculture located in the adjacent community. In addition, bio-gas produced as a by-product of composting has the potential to generate enough electricity to power its own systems. Integrating the waste-tower on a school site, centrally located within the community and opposite the main site of urban agriculture, allows for daily activities, such as exercising, playing, learning and making to run parallel with the waste processing. By introducing public space into a waste process, the architecture is elevated from a typical industrial building to a new typology that attracts and encourages interaction with what is typically regarded as negative and ‘off-limits’.

© Stavros Kondeas 2025