The Bank of Ideas

The project was done for an annual 3 day SACES workshop organised by the Society of Architecture and Civil Engineering Students at the University of Malta. Building something out of waste material was the most instinctive thing to do.
Which we did, but we also wanted to encapsulate an other intangible waste; The waste of ideas from self-inhibition (shame, shyness, distrust)

Used plastic bottles were utilized as a way to contain and store ideas written down on paper; using the concept of the message in a bottle.
On the site of the workshop we found a discarded steel frame previously used as “Monkey bars” in an abandoned playground.
We found this steelframe to be ideal to hold these thoughts and ideas together as one monumental body. Furthermore these ‘monkey bars’ reminds in the act of play, an action were self-inhibition is pushed aside for creativity and individualism to get loose.

The project was used as an interactive sculpture where visitors would go around/below/inside the steel frame, choose their desired bottle and white down whatever thought they feel like to go out in the open. Approximately 480 bottles were used. The translucency of the material made it possible to be used at night as a lantern, attracting more visitors during the night.

 

 

Head in the Clouds

Head in the clouds is a pavilion built on the occasion of figment’s 2013 ‘city of dreams art celebration’ in New York. The sculpture was assembled by Jason Klimoski and Wesley Chang from KCA architects, who needed 53,780 recycled plastic bottles and milk containers – this amount is consumed in NYC in about 1 hour. While the milk jugs form the exterior cloud visually, the interior is created from smaller 16 and 24 ounce PET bottles filled with blue colour water evocating the feeling of being in the middle of a cloud. This all is held up with an aluminium frame. The structure can shelter approximately 50 people. The installation ran for approximately 2 months from february 2013.

Pavilion Head in the Clouds, photo: Chuck Choi
Head in the Clouds section, picture: Lesley Chang
Head in the Clouds interior
Head in the Clouds exterior

Campo Cielo

Campo Cielo, Honduras, 2004

Campo Cielo is a sort of club room for women realized in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 2004 by Andreas Froese. It offers shelter for about eight people. The building has an integrated water tank which required that cement had to be used in order to protect the earth mortar from water.

Froese usually does not apply cement in the walls of the buildings, but rather relies on earth mortar to stick the PET bottles together (see for example also the Trivadrum Cerala in India on this page).