A new landmark in NYC would bring new life to Cherry Hill, creating a new center at the park besides some of its most remarkable sites such as The Ramble, The Lake, Sheep Meadow, Bethesda Fountain and John Lennon's Memorial. The Bottle would be a disruptive event and a sight to behold from all over Manhattan, from Times Square, Broadway and many other iconic places.
PLASTIC EDUCATION TOWER
A DIY Plastic Incubator and a Tomb for the Disposable Waste Culture
Type Competition Submission
client Switch Competitions
colaborations Camilo Castelo Branco
size 2827 sqm (implementation - Crypt); 962 sqm (ground leve - Bottlel); 18220 sqm (total)
location Cherry Hill, Central Park, NYC
status Idea
It feels only right to create a plastic mausoleum precisely at the heart of Central Park, the Eden of the World’s most iconic city for consumerism. New York’s redemption of disposable commodities would hereby emerge as a pictorial message inside a huge PET bottle, as a pragmatic and symbolic step towards a post-waste humane civilization.
This landmark would disrupt the passive perception the global community has regarding plastic waste and acknowledges the substantial consequences of apparently small things, like a water or soda bottle.
This landmark would disrupt the passive perception the global community has regarding plastic waste and acknowledges the substantial consequences of apparently small things, like a water or soda bottle.
The Bottle presents itself as a hovering object over Central Park when you are near it, by the entrance. The intent is to echo XXth century's dreams of a Garden City, reawakening the possibility of having gardens climbing the NYC's skyscappers in the future and to remind New Yorkers of the perks of having massive buildings floating over fields, gardens and farms.
Programatic Cut Section:
1- Crypt and Altar; Plastic Sorting, Washing and Shredding Infrastructure | 2 - Lobby and Foyer; Cloakroom and Changing Room | 3 - DIY Plastic Recycling and Upcycling Activities (PET and HDPE, PP and PS, LPDE and PVC) and Prototyping Laboratory | 4 - Plastic Utipia Gardens and Playgroud | 5 - Plasticity Club (Inside and Outside Events) | 6 - Bar and Restaurant | 7 - Edible Gardens and Terraces | 8 - Beacon and Sightseeing Viewpoint
Left Image Gardens would be held through wastewater managment and water harvesting systems managed in situ using the created plastic objects.
Right Image Multiple themes intertwine with the problems of plastic waste, and within them lie multiple opportunities for turning waste into resource.
The monumental, high-rise infrastructure is designed as an experimenting, hands-on plastic waste management facility, purposely located in the center of this green area.
The Plastic Education Tower (PET) makes visitors aware not only of the waste they produce but also of new resources and activities with the aim to promote a proud circular economy focused on the recycling of Plastic Resources.
It houses a garbage sanctuary in its crypt and allows for all plastic lifecycles to end and begin anew. Around the crypt’s altar, where plastic waste is to be collected, different units for industrial washing, shredding and sorting mark the beginning of both the recycling process and the exhibits.
The Bottle itself is an open-ended set of plastic installations. It appeals to the city’s spirit of innovation and artistic expression. These are to unfold within a gigantic urban collective canvas designed for multiple purposes and activities around themes such as Plastic or Civilization Beyond Waste, based on what best qualifies plastic materials: plasticity.
The Plastic Education Tower (PET) makes visitors aware not only of the waste they produce but also of new resources and activities with the aim to promote a proud circular economy focused on the recycling of Plastic Resources.
It houses a garbage sanctuary in its crypt and allows for all plastic lifecycles to end and begin anew. Around the crypt’s altar, where plastic waste is to be collected, different units for industrial washing, shredding and sorting mark the beginning of both the recycling process and the exhibits.
The Bottle itself is an open-ended set of plastic installations. It appeals to the city’s spirit of innovation and artistic expression. These are to unfold within a gigantic urban collective canvas designed for multiple purposes and activities around themes such as Plastic or Civilization Beyond Waste, based on what best qualifies plastic materials: plasticity.
Left Image Understanding the History of Plastics is very important in order to tackle humanity's overhaul of its relationships with polymers in the broadest sense. The Beyond Plastics exhibition and Incubator brings biopolymers and other alternatives to "conventional" plastics to the table within the Bottle.
Right Image Having a pile of plastic waste at the altar of the Crypt serves not only a symbolical purpose but also a practical one. Things within the Bottle, like most of activities and objects in general, have a finite lifecycle. When the objects made lose their purpose, a common chute allows all that plastic waste to go back to its source at the Altar where it can meet a new beginning of sorting, reusing and recycling.
The Crypt, lying underneath the Bottle is where all of the collected plastic waste woud be gathered in order to meet a new beginning at the bottle activities. This is where most of the recycling infrastructure would be placed, around the altar at the core of this centripetal space. In this space, at the second level, an exhibition about plastic waste and disposable culture would be held to further ground us in the grimmest aspects of the realities on which the buildings activities' stand.
The Plastic Education Tower is designed as a beacon warning us of the need to pay attention to the size of our ecological probems and to the threat they represent. It is also a beacon of celebration, rewarding those who take the effort to reuse, recycle and upcycle plastic waste with one of the most priviledged viewpoints there would be in NYC.
Northern Overlook of the Bottle standing behind Central Park's Lake and Bow Bridge
