Ieva Saudargaitė

Saudargaité is a Beirut-based Lithuanian-lebanese architect and photographer. After earning her bachelor’s degree in architecture, she has moved on to work with a number of architecture firms and her photographs have been featured in both national and international publications. She also contributes articles regularly to a number of publications.

The trash crisis is just the tip of the iceberg of the multiple factors that have led to it, and should be tackled on many fronts. One such front is the enforcement of a national recycling policy and the construction of an infrastructure that will allow for that along with the building of plants that can process waste to energy (we have a 25 year old energy crisis to resolve too). Another front, a much greater one to surmount, is the culture of corruption, which takes the nation 10 steps back the moment it moves one step forward. No one simplistic solution is an answer. But as a designer, and somebody whose perception of the world was greatly influenced by architecture school, I would like to witness the culture of recycling, smart consumption and environmental preservation become part of the educational programme across schools, universities and households. Furthermore, universities should recycle regardless of whether the rest of the nation is following suit, and become laboratories in material experimentation thus providing an opportunity for engineering and design students to learn more about and create novel materials. The local actors in the design scene are fluent in concrete, marble and metal, but there is definitely room for it to venture out into unknown territory.