Flood prevention through trash
Royal College of Art - 2022
Growing up in Ghana, I watched open roadside gutters fill with trash season after season — blocking water flow and causing severe flooding every time it rained. This project was my response.
Flood Prevention through Trash is a regenerative design project developed during my MA at the Royal College of Art. The brief was simple: turn the problem into the solution.
I designed a modular gutter cover system that traps roadside trash while still allowing water to flow freely through. The modules are manufactured by Cedar Environmental L.L.C., a waste recycling company in Lebanon, using collected trash as the raw material — creating a self-sustaining cycle where the problem literally builds its own solution.
The modular pieces join together using only heat, requiring no additional hardware or tools, and can be scaled to cover gutters of any length. The system is designed to be maintained and expanded by local communities.
Process
The project involved on-the-ground research into Ghana's waste infrastructure, material exploration with recycled plastic profiles, gutter mock-ups, prototype development, and community system mapping — investigating not just the object but the entire ecosystem it would need to function within.
