Contributed by Carmen Summerfield
On a recent trip to the Netherlands, I went to Utrecht to see a giant sculpture of a whale called “Skyscraper”. This sculpture is made entirely out of plastic waste materials collected from the Pacific Ocean.
“Skyscraper” originated in Belgium, as an entry in the 2018 Bruges triennial themed “Liquid City” and was designed by StudioKCA, an award-winning architecture and design firm led by Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang based in Brooklyn, New York.
StudioKCA worked with volunteers from the Hawaii Wildlife Fund and the Surfrider Foundation to comb the beaches and waters of Hawaii and gather over five tons of plastic waste material that was floating on the surface of the Pacific Ocean as ‘plastic soup’. This accumulation of waste was then used as a medium for their four story tall sculptural whale “Skyscraper”.
This sculpture “Skyscraper” serves to address the 150 million tons of plastic waste that remains floating in the Pacific Ocean, as well as emphasize the necessity for individual and collective action.
Regarding the ultimate decision to create a whale sculpture out of this accumulation, StudioKCA explains: ‘a whale, breaching from the water, is the first ‘skyscraper of the sea’, and as the largest mammal in the water, it felt like the right form for our piece to take in order to show the scope and scale of the problem. also, we were able to pull over 5 tons of plastic out of the ocean in a very short period of time, which means we have material for something large.’
As well as being a striking sculpture and hard to miss (and offering a great selfie opportunity), the work highlights the growing problem of plastic pollution in our oceans – the biggest liquid city of our planet.
After the Bruges triennial, at the initiative of Utrecht University, “Skyscraper” was moved to the Catharijnesingel near Utrecht Central Station in the Netherlands.
According to Utrecht University: ‘The piece is a great fit for our research into the sustainable use of rivers and oceans. Not only is the whale a great fit for our research, it's also a cool way to make people aware of the fact that we really need to take action on this front. The piece is about as high as a four-story building, so it's sure to stand out. It even looks quite cheerful – until you examine it properly and recognize where all the plastic came from, that is. It's quite a clever concept by the artist.’
We have whales in Alaska. Perhaps we can make our own “Skyscraper” right here…. Do you want to be part of this project?
