The art installation Mega Mat addresses the issue of plastic waste and emphasises the need to recycle it. The designed giant carpet was created as part of Bangkok Design Week and took up a large area of the city’s Lan Khon Mueang Square in front of City Hall.
Mega Mat is a modular carpet made from more than 500 recycled plastic mats. The installation has a vivid, energising colour and creates an 860sq m area that is one large infographic about the processing of plastic waste in Thailand. Around two million tonnes of plastic waste are produced in the country every year. The problem has been recognised by the authorities, who are making changes to the law to increase the amount of waste recycled.
When creating the installation, architects at MVRDV set out to show that plastic is ubiquitous. It is common in homes in the country, very often in the form of mats that Thai families have sat on for generations. A total of 532 mats were used to create the installation, creating one huge one for the city’s residents.
After Bangkok Design Week, the Mega Mat will be dismantled, divided into smaller pieces and donated to local temples and people who will use them to practice yoga. Some will be recycled into products such as bags.
The colours of the mat form a gradient, which serves as an infographic to inform people about how plastic waste is disposed of in the country. Red represents the percentage of waste that is sent to landfills, shades of orange symbolise the percentage that goes to more secure landfills that are separated from the ground, while yellow represents the percentage of waste that is not collected. The shades of green in the centre represent the percentage of plastic that is recycled. The latter is the least.
One corner of the mat has been raised to resemble the roof of the Buddhist temple of Wat Suthat in Bangkok. The corner has become a canopy under which information on recycling issues is given. The rest of the mat allows people to sit down and enjoy a rest.
design team: Sanne van der Burgh, Sredej Bunnag, Americo Iannazzone, Zhijia Xiong, Jiani You, Dimitrios Kogkalidis, Sen Yang, Miruna Dunu, Marcela Tamez Cabello
photography: DOF SkyGround
source: MVRDV(https://www.mvrdv.com)
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