Counter-Mapping Relational Waste Legacies in the Duwamish Valley and Watershed








For the first few weeks, students embarked on the research, mapping, and documentation of a waste material within the Duwamish Valley and River Watershed. The projects aimed to reveal the infrastructure that produces the waste material alongside the human and more-than-human conditions that enable or emerge from its production. This required synthesizing dense and complex layers of research to graphically describe the processes of the waste material’s local and regional network. Findings were shared at the end of the project as an opportunity to learn from one another and collectively form a base of information for later projects.


Contamination Histories / Yanrong Zheng


Duwamish River Remediation / Rhys Coffee

Filling the Duwamish River Valley / Laura Swett


Waste Management Systems / Mingrui Jia





Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecologies / Dominique De Gracia

Food and Organic Waste / Su Li

Wastewater Management / Matt Olszewski

Demolition and Construction Debris / Jesse Sleamaker




Industrial Processes / Jack Hyland

Energy Resources / Yen-Chia Pan

Industrial Histories / Yijun Zhang














we acknowledge the people – past, present, and future – of the Dkhw’Duw’Absh, the Duwamish Tribe, the Muckleshoot, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and many more Coast Salish peoples on whose traditional lands we live, study, and work