I really liked to see how Monterrey was expanding and how much of the expansion in this context created new strategies to manage its realities, for instance: the use of waste of others; the recovering of objects, clothes, materials for construction, which provides an economy linked to the city; copying standard methods of construction; use of space; urbanism; etc. This happens more in a symbolic way than the one we usually know.

SS: Could you explain the basic principles of Collecting System? This has been the main focus of your work thus far, and your central project for Beyond Green comes out of it.

BB: We pay close attention to multiple aspects of a local situation. We ask several questions. Are there material and human resources that are leftover or unused? Who has access and control of these materials? What conditions are people living in? What can our abilities and concerns do to make something useful occur in this situation? We then identify those aspects that concern us the most and try to implement a useful project that includes, among other things, learning about waste, energy use, employment, local social and economic ecologies, self-empowerment, and so on. We make posters, models, and other supporting material that helps us learn and also spreads the knowledge we accumulate.

RL: Collecting System is constructed out of some of the possibilities of a given situation and points out some of the social and economic structures that dominate the space. We use leftovers, in relation to thinking and discussion about how to merge our work into already existing and expanding urban planning and economies. From the perspective of sustainability it is often not an optimal solution (if you can even talk about optimal situations in this case).

SS: Collecting System has so far been put into practice in several locations. Could you talk about how it's been implemented in Japan and Mexico?

RL: In Japan, unused materials produced by households are state property or private property but managed by the municipalities. In addition, pirate companies are collecting them. As a consequence it is difficult to get access to unused materials. We set up another collecting system for getting material for the experiments, and flyers were distributed that informed about the work that the materials gathered through Collecting System would be a part of. We got appointments with different offices and shops, and we collected the unused material by car or by bike; some persons delivered it to the school

The gathered unused material was used for different purposes. Shredded paper was used for experiments with paper bricks for dwellings. The paper was used for papier mвchй models. Paper Dwelling > Learning by Sea Urchin, Model 1:1 was made out of cardboard and after a period at the Arts Initiative Tokyo, where it was used, it went into the Japanese recycling system. Walking City was an activity with 78 persons at the Goshu Elementary School. After a few days of constructing more than 50 wearable buildings out of the cardboard, the city walked out of the school.

JC: The dynamic in Mexico was about creating a workshop while the collection system was working simultaneously. The neighborhood was involved in the collection of material and was shown part of the final results of the construction and how this waste can be transformed into another type of object with its own values as a construction and as a dwelling. After that a small group of people previously working in the workshop helped to construct a room 6 x 3 meters wide. As a result of the initial construction, people asked that a few more be made. The original group split into a few to spread the knowledge of how to make the dwelling.

SS: For Beyond Green, you will make a model of the cardboard-and-bottle building method that you've just tested in Mexico; here it will be built using material collected on campus. Since you've already tested the system in Mexico, do you see the model functioning here as a learning tool for others-a way of modeling/spreading your ideas-or do you still have things you want to learn by making a new, portable version of the structure?

JC: Both can work because the method could be improved every time that a construction is made. The help of others and uses of different technologies could change the construction design and process a lot. It depends on many circumstances.

BB: We use scale models and 1:1 models precisely as you suggest: as learning tools. These are both for us and for others. Models are wonderful because they allow you to mentally place yourself inside the worlds they suggest. We can't take everyone with us to Mexico, but being in the same room with the 1:1 model will get you a lot closer and show you how you could build something similar with your own waste. They are also placeholders of sorts. That's also true of the papier mвchй scale model for mushroom farming that's included in the show. We will eventually build underground mushroom farms here in Chicago, but this will take several years to realize. There is so much to consider and actually doing it is highly illegal. The models make the ideas concrete and present.