If you think guerrilla gastronomy is a load of old rubbish – then wait until you see what’s about to be dumped in Melbourne’s Federation Square from 29 October 2008 until 29 January 2009.

The Greenhouse, a self-sustaining event venue will rise from the ground of Federation Square at the end of October and for three months only will dish up degustation fare - in part dug from the garden of its own roof-top space - in a structure designed entirely from detritus. Tiny ‘taste-tubes’ (science laboratory ware is just some of the discard to double as dishes) will be served by vintage-dressed waiters wheeling ‘de-registered’ shopping trolleys around furniture made from found ‘stuff’.

Think local, act local is the imperative of this ‘waste of a space’ project that is the brain-child of one man who, having made a life’s work of trash, will show how simply it turns into treasure….with minimal cost to pocket and no cost to the planet.

Repulsed by the practices of a planet that keeps making stuff without any thought to the impact of creating more stuff, celebrated flower artist and waste wizard Joost (a man whose creativity warrants no more than a single moniker) was pushed by event entrepreneur, Corina Baldwin of ‘bigger than ten bears’, his co-collaborator on some of Melbourne’s most memorable events, to take up the opportunity of a three month tenure at Federation Square.

Extrapolating the experiment of his own home, an extra-ordinary pot-plant veiled structure made from straw bales and furnished entirely from and with other’s waste, Joost decided to take the opportunity to project its possibilities into a more commercial structure in a dense city environment. Conceiving a building made from straw bales - one of the world’s biggest and most problematic waste products - set into a 100% recyclable steel framework (uncoiled and cut on site), he envisaged a ‘Greenhouse’ that whilst serving as a platform for Spring to Summer exhibition that would serve to instruct a city on how simple and straightforward sustainability practice can be if each individual gives a thought to the life-cycle of the things they consume.

Enlisting the material donation and promise of voluntary labour from all manner of like-minded industry and individuals, Joost took his Waste of a Space idea – with its floors of deconstructed shipping crates, feature wall of wild strawberries planted in old plastic palettes, tables fabricated from redundant fire hydrants, chairs of re-structured street signs and shade-cloths woven from tiles discarded by the Melbourne Cricket Club – to officials at Melbourne City Council and expected the bureaucracy to baulk at the precedent.

“Who’s going to rubber-stamp a roof-top garden in Fed Square complete with compositing vats, a burgeoning vegie patch, rows of bay trees in recycled CHEP bins and buzzing-alive bee-hives?” But the director of design and urban environment at the City of Melbourne, Professor Rob Adams instantly saw in The Greenhouse a small salve to the heat island effect and an accessible, artful opportunity to make the public think about how technology, processes and materials are impacting on the planet and how they might make a difference. So the red-tape was cut through and planning is now underway for its imminent launch.