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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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The international competition, Tower of Babylon, sponsored by the Global Alliance of Technical Universities, has seven teams from architecture universities in China, India, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.
The aim of the competition was to have a new perspective on sustainability by focusing on inspiration, networking and collaboration to achieve a symbol for a region, a country a city and its university. The competition mandated each team use only local materials, their know-how and their hands.
“The concept of three bottle towers juxtaposed with inverted towers of hangers was selected because our team believes that both materials reflect the wasteful consumption patterns of our culture and that both materials could make beautiful installations,” said fourth-year School of Architecture student David Duncan. “As bottles and hangers are each PET products, we felt that the two were related and would work well together. We knew it would take a lot of effort to design and build two separate installations, but it was worthwhile in the end.”
“The concept was selected because it combines two aspects,” said Baerlecken. “First of all, it creates awareness about two products of our everyday life: plastic bottles and coat hangers. We see how many bottles are consumed on campus on one day and we see how many hangers are wasted during one year at one local department store. The installation gives trash a spatial presence. We can see invisible data.”
Baerlecken continues, “But at the same time we see how waste can be highly aesthetic. The installation creates a series of spaces that inform different perceptions of the surrounding space through color, light and configuration of parts with variable connections. The project shows how waste can be up-cycled rather than down-cycled.”
