Stone, Emma2019-06-192019-06-192019-06-18https://hdl.handle.net/1794/2464985 pages. Examining committee chair: Mark EischeidDespite their remote location and green veneer, landfills, like many industrial sites, have become monuments to consumerism. Every day in Lane County, Oregon, the equivalent of six pounds of waste per resident joins the local wasteshed. Destination: Short Mountain Landfill. Landfills generate many kinds of experiences and are capable of eliciting qualities of the sublime. The toxic sublime is characterized by five tensions: beauty and ugliness, magnitude and insignificance, known and unkown, inhabitation and desolation, and security and risk. These tensions are identified and illustrated by Jennifer Peeples through an analysis of Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of toxic landscapes. This project translates the toxic sublime from the analysis of two-dimensional media into the design of four-dimensional landscapes through critical practice. To do so, this project first analyzes the origins and changing contexts of the sublime as an aesthetic category, then synthesizes the history of waste and landfills in America. A case study analysis reveals how the toxic sublime is found in existing designed projects. This synthesis and analysis informs the next phase, a site-scale design of Short Mountain Landfill in Lane County, Oregon. The site-scale design demonstrates how Peeples’ five tensions may be expressed in toxic landscapes, such as landfills.en-USCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USLandfillSublimeToxic sublimeLandfill designPost-industrial landscapeTerminal Project