“The severity of global marine plastic pollution has reached a certain level. According to records, at least 26 cetaceans died after ingesting plastic fragments. (Baird and Hooker, 2000). Bruges, known as “Little Venice”, is a small town with a romantic atmosphere, strolling along the cobblestoned streets, alongside the winding canal, and the beautiful Gothic architecture. But the canal in the city jumped out of a huge whale, and the full 4-story body was made of discarded plastic garbage in the ocean. But a huge whale jumped out of the canal in the city, and the full four-story body was made of discarded plastic garbage in the ocean. The elegant body lines revealed the fearful facts – The amount of garbage you ignore in those cities has long exceeded people’s imagination and seriously damaged the marine ecology.”
This whale has an ironic name: “skyscraper”, which was built by Brooklyn-based architecture and design company STUDIOKCA to echo the theme of “Liquid City” at the Bruges Triennial. The theme “liquid city” means that the Pacific Ocean may be the most distant thing in our minds. However, urban life is closely connected with the earth ’s oceans. Cities produce a lot of plastic waste. What ’s more terrible is that 8 million tons of plastic waste are discharged into the ocean every year. It is estimated that there are currently 150 million tons of plastic fragments floating in the ocean, which means that there is more plastic floating in the ocean than whales. “The ocean has gradually become the largest liquid city in the world.” (Yatzer 2018)
In this project, they collaborated with volunteers from the Hawaii Wildlife Foundation and Surfrider Foundation, which salvaged and collected five tons of plastic waste used to build “skyscrapers” from Hawaii’s beaches. After classifying plastics by size and color, and engineering the internal steel structure, the company successfully carried out the manufacturing and transportation of this huge device on Kickstarter. However, this concept makes the whale itself a tool for thinking about consumption and production in the center of the city. This sculpture strongly reminds us what we are sending into the ocean, resulting in the shocking environmental conditions of the ocean. This project perfectly shows that the world is interconnected. The design team made an appropriate analogy. In other words, if you accidentally drop a plastic cup into the canal, it may result in the pollution of the ocean thousands of miles away. Then a whale will also enter the city through the canal. This will affect people’s life trajectory.
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