Living Terrain reimagines Rainham Landfill as ecological infrastructure rather than a landscape to be hidden after closure. Returning to the site in 1996, before the landfill was built, the project asks how landscape architecture could shape its full life cycle through filling, settlement, water, infrastructure and ecological succession.

It is framed through two 'monsters': the Thames, an ancient force of erosion and flooding, and the landfill, a younger body formed by urban consumption and waste. Their interaction creates a changing landscape where waste, water, ecology and infrastructure coexist. Settlement becomes a design tool for generating varied terrain, while different landforms, substrates and hydrological conditions support a mosaic of habitats.

These studies are brought together through a phased masterplan and six spatial moments, from the artificial mountain and tidal edge to waste craters, ecological treatment landscapes and the operational core. Rather than restoring an idealised nature, the project explores how we might live with waste as material, infrastructure and a foundation for future ecologies.