Plastic Paradise Sculpture – Pangna and Mohammed

Title – Plastic Paradise

Abstract – This project was designed to showcase the prevalence of plastic waste produced by developed countries, with a particular focus on UAE. Residents of this country use around 450 plastic bottles each year, one of the highest amount in the world. As such, our work was inspired by this worrying statistic and was built primarily using plastic bottles. We wanted to build a structure that could be easily recognisable worldwide but had a strong relations to the country of UAE, which is why we picked Atlantis, The Palm as our inspiration. We hope our work will encourage people in the UAE and beyond to educate themselves on the topic of plastic waste and their contribution to it.   

Here is a brief 35 seconds video showcasing our work:

The slides for our sculpture presentation, which contains the symbolism and references made in the project, can be accessed here.

Reasoning for our title – The experience of living in the Atlantis would be acceptable by many to be a unique and unforgettable experience that any person should try to experience at least once in their life. Many would even draw parallel among living in the Palm as “being in heaven”, as such we thought to call it Plastic Paradise, as we replicate the “place of paradise” using plastic.

Difficulties – It was hard to cut and tape plastic with precision using just scissors.The curvature of plastic made it hard to create box-like shapes. Size and material constraints limited what projects we could do. Maintaining proportions among the building structures was tedious without measuring tools.

Takeaways – I am impressed by our ability to brainstorm and come up with such a project in a short amount of time with the limited resources we had.

Improvements – Given more time and resource we hope to create a island like replica, which has a large amount of water surrounding the structure, instead of the smaller water enclosure that we went with currently. We also hope to make the model more stable and more detailed. We also think that we could better color the plastic so the outlines of the plastics are more easily recognisable. 

Behind the scenes – Here are some BTS scenes and pictures to show the building process and give a better idea of the sculpture.

Front View of the Sculpture:

Zoomed in view of the water enclosure: (can you notice the boat and plastic waste?)

Top view of the sculpture: 

Bottom view of the sculpture:

This was one of our favourite shots due to the lightning which produced almost a spark like effects, giving the structure the glamour shared by its real life counterpart.

Finally, a picture of the creators, Pangna and myself (left) with the final prototype of the sculpture, after days of research and work.

If you made it till the end, thank you!

References:

https://www.khaleejtimes.com/nation/dubai/go-drastic-on-plastic-in-uae