Showcase 2024 Student Spotlights: Maram Issa

From Scraps to Soil: Growing minds and gardens by Maram Issa

The project

This project is aimed at transforming Nottingham's current Broadmarsh Shopping Centre into an educational and experimental space, with the goal of raising public awareness of the negative and positive impacts of food waste. It provides an outdoor market and eating areas to facilitate the conversion of food waste into composting, in addition to the nearby restaurants on Middle Pavement, where consumers may collect their food waste via the mobile 'compost pod'.

Following these activities, visitors will participate in a range of workshops to learn about the benefits of compost that may be applied to the building or their general lifestyle. As you can see, the building is designed to be a continuous circular economy cycle.

Inspiration about the project

The project's inspiration stems from the fact that the location contains a variety of restaurants across the city centre where food is wasted, as well as learning how to connect people through food. This was informed by a number of case studies and literature, like Stopia, on how people are accountable for both reducing and increasing food waste.

Being part of NTU

Being at NTU pushed Maram out of her comfort zone in order to acquire the skills that she now has, such as verbal presentations and software, but it also enabled her to pursue my hobby, physical drawing.

Closing remarks

Definitely a tough yet rewarding course, especially since this project had constraints that I had to work around. However, architecture is a diverse subject that allows for the incorporation of numerous abilities, similar to becoming a jack of all trades.

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