Drawing of the tower from above, twelve-sided floor plan with dimensions

Ocean Dome

Green Point Park, Cape Town, South Africa, 2015

Permanent installation of 50 gabions (wire baskets) stacked like bricks to form a round tower and filled with plastic waste. The material – collected on the beaches of the Western Cape near Cape Town (Atlantic) – consists of 10,000 bottles, fishing nets, fishing lines and other plastic finds. It is distributed across the gabions, each 0.3 m deep and 1 m² in size, with a total façade area of 50 m². Inside the tower is a 4.5 m high, extremely stable and lightweight load-bearing structure made of 2 mm thick, repeatedly folded, galvanised sheet steel, connected solely with screws.

The construction method and the use of waste as a resource also experiment with its application in “low-cost” architecture. As an art object and place to visit in public space – among other things on guided tours for

school classes – the collected plastic waste illustrates the severe pollution of the oceans, the enormous quantity of the most diverse plastics and their slow decomposition. As a building material, plastic can, for example, contribute to thermal insulation and thus improve the indoor climate. Depending on industrial processing, the material can be returned to the production cycle untreated or separated by type.

Realised with the support of the Bavarian State Chancellery and the Free State of Bavaria.

Collaboration/Funding

City of Cape Town’s Environmental Resource Management Department (ERMD); Paul Carew, PJC Carew Consulting, Cape Town, South Africa; Rothfuss Gabionen, manufacturer, Hemmingen/Stuttgart, Germany

Project video
Book: “static & dynamic”

Ocean Dome

Green Point Park, Cape Town, South Africa, 2015

Permanent installation of 50 gabions (wire baskets) stacked like bricks to form a round tower and filled with plastic waste. The material – collected on the beaches of the Western Cape near Cape Town (Atlantic) – consists of 10,000 bottles, fishing nets, fishing lines and other plastic finds. It is distributed across the gabions, each 0.3 m deep and 1 m² in size, with a total façade area of 50 m². Inside the tower is a 4.5 m high, extremely stable and lightweight load-bearing structure made of 2 mm thick, repeatedly folded, galvanised sheet steel, connected solely with screws.

The construction method and the use of waste as a resource also experiment with its application in “low-cost” architecture. As an art object and place to visit in public space – among other things on guided tours for

school classes – the collected plastic waste illustrates the severe pollution of the oceans, the enormous quantity of the most diverse plastics and their slow decomposition. As a building material, plastic can, for example, contribute to thermal insulation and thus improve the indoor climate. Depending on industrial processing, the material can be returned to the production cycle untreated or separated by type.

Realised with the support of the Bavarian State Chancellery and the Free State of Bavaria.

Collaboration/Funding

City of Cape Town’s Environmental Resource Management Department (ERMD); Paul Carew, PJC Carew Consulting, Cape Town, South Africa; Rothfuss Gabionen, manufacturer, Hemmingen/Stuttgart, Germany

Project video
Book: “static & dynamic”

Ocean Dome

Green Point Park, Cape Town, South Africa, 2015

Permanent installation of 50 gabions (wire baskets) stacked like bricks to form a round tower and filled with plastic waste. The material – collected on the beaches of the Western Cape near Cape Town (Atlantic) – consists of 10,000 bottles, fishing nets, fishing lines and other plastic finds. It is distributed across the gabions, each 0.3 m deep and 1 m² in size, with a total façade area of 50 m². Inside the tower is a 4.5 m high, extremely stable and lightweight load-bearing structure made of 2 mm thick, repeatedly folded, galvanised sheet steel, connected solely with screws.

The construction method and the use of waste as a resource also experiment with its application in “low-cost” architecture. As an art object and place to visit in public space – among other things on guided tours for

school classes – the collected plastic waste illustrates the severe pollution of the oceans, the enormous quantity of the most diverse plastics and their slow decomposition. As a building material, plastic can, for example, contribute to thermal insulation and thus improve the indoor climate. Depending on industrial processing, the material can be returned to the production cycle untreated or separated by type.

Realised with the support of the Bavarian State Chancellery and the Free State of Bavaria.

Collaboration/Funding

City of Cape Town’s Environmental Resource Management Department (ERMD); Paul Carew, PJC Carew Consulting, Cape Town, South Africa; Rothfuss Gabionen, manufacturer, Hemmingen/Stuttgart, Germany

Project video
Book: “static & dynamic”

Ocean Dome

Green Point Park, Cape Town, South Africa, 2015

Permanent installation of 50 gabions (wire baskets) stacked like bricks to form a round tower and filled with plastic waste. The material – collected on the beaches of the Western Cape near Cape Town (Atlantic) – consists of 10,000 bottles, fishing nets, fishing lines and other plastic finds. It is distributed across the gabions, each 0.3 m deep and 1 m² in size, with a total façade area of 50 m². Inside the tower is a 4.5 m high, extremely stable and lightweight load-bearing structure made of 2 mm thick, repeatedly folded, galvanised sheet steel, connected solely with screws.

The construction method and the use of waste as a resource also experiment with its application in “low-cost” architecture. As an art object and place to visit in public space – among other things on guided tours for

school classes – the collected plastic waste illustrates the severe pollution of the oceans, the enormous quantity of the most diverse plastics and their slow decomposition. As a building material, plastic can, for example, contribute to thermal insulation and thus improve the indoor climate. Depending on industrial processing, the material can be returned to the production cycle untreated or separated by type.

Realised with the support of the Bavarian State Chancellery and the Free State of Bavaria.

Collaboration/Funding

City of Cape Town’s Environmental Resource Management Department (ERMD); Paul Carew, PJC Carew Consulting, Cape Town, South Africa; Rothfuss Gabionen, manufacturer, Hemmingen/Stuttgart, Germany

Project video
Book: “static & dynamic”

Close-up of the wire baskets filled with plastic bottles, nets and lines

Filling the gabion baskets with plastic waste from the beaches of Cape Town.

Workers on the scaffold mounting the filled wire baskets on the tower

Side drawing of the tower, wire-basket façade over the inner load-bearing structure

Fig. left: assembly of the gabion baskets filled with plastic waste on the tower. The tower consists of pre-galvanised sheet steel folded into thin T-shaped metal profiles and screwed together. Produced in Cape Town.

Filling the gabion baskets with plastic waste from the beaches of Cape Town.

Fig. left: assembly of the gabion baskets filled with plastic waste on the tower. The tower consists of pre-galvanised sheet steel folded into thin T-shaped metal profiles and screwed together. Produced in Cape Town.

Filling the gabion baskets with plastic waste from the beaches of Cape Town.

Fig. left: assembly of the gabion baskets filled with plastic waste on the tower. The tower consists of pre-galvanised sheet steel folded into thin T-shaped metal profiles and screwed together. Produced in Cape Town.

In a workshop, men screw together the spars of the sheet-metal load-bearing structure

Construction of the supporting structure from thin galvanised sheet steel. The spars of folded sheet metal are screwed together and were made specially for the tower.

Plastic waste washed up among seaweed and shells on the beach

Filling the gabion baskets with plastic waste from the beaches of Cape Town on the South Atlantic.