"Carbonized Earth Garden" is completed and can be visited at the Huangpu Riverside in Shanghai.

Carbonized Earth Garden

Shanghai

Shanghai Urban Space Art Season 2019 (also known as SUSAS 2019) is a biannual art festival to advance the process of transformation of Shanghai, promote its organic renewal, enhance its public spaces and innovative power, strengthen its competitiveness as a global city, and create an attractive showcase for the city. In 2019 the theme of the festival was "Encounter" challenging artists from all over the world to redevelop the 5.5-kilometer long Huangpu Waterfront through public artworks.

BAM implemented the studio review approach to the competition: each designer was on their own to tackle the competition however they saw fit. Among BAM’s seven bold schemes for the five competition sites a design developed by freshman BAMMER Li Kewen won the first prize for the "Ecological Hills" site. BAM’s design took inspiration from the site itself, which was developed by a tabacco magnate. Li Kewen began the design by looking at something people usually try to look past, cigarette butts on the sidewalk.

The idea proposed by the team was to try to develop a garden out of these pieces of waste, to focus on the cigarette butt itself as the seed of the garden. After researching the chemical makeup of cigarette ends, and the tobacco growing processes, the team came up with the idea of a garden with a central receptacle that catches cigarette butts. As such the artwork not only provides a fun way of collecting cigarette waste, but also sets in motion a process of natural recycling and plant growth.

The Carbonized Earth Garden expands from a center of pure carbon and gradually becomes pure tobacco mulch as it extends to the perimeter. The garden itself is not planted in the beginning, but relies on the seeds of the outside landscape grasses and plants to colonize the carbonized earth gradient over time.

点燃烟灰的生态可循环装置

上海

SUSAS 每两年举办一次,旨在进一步促进上海的转型发展,推动城市有机更新,提升城市公共空间品质,打造上海城市魅力的名片,并增强上海成为卓越的全球城市的文化竞争力。本届 SUSAS 的主题是“相遇”,邀请来自世界各地的艺术家在杨浦区滨江南段5.5公里滨水公共空间中进行挑战性的创作。

BAM 在竞赛中采用了工作室内部评图的方法:每个设计师都要为自己的竞赛单元负责。在 BAM 为5个竞赛点位设计的7个大胆方案中,由新人 BAMMER 李科文设计的一个方案获得了“生态之丘”点位的一等奖。BAM 的设计灵感来自场地本身,其前身为上海卷烟厂仓库。李科文的设计始于人们通常忽视的东西——人行道上的烟头。

团队提出的想法是从废弃物之中尝试开发出一个花园,并把重点放在烟头本身。在研究了香烟末端的化学成分和烟草的生长过程后,研究小组提出在花园中央设置容器,用来收集烟头的概念。如此一来,这些艺术作品不仅提供了收集废弃烟头的有趣方式,也开启了自然循环和植物生长的动态过程。

《点燃烟灰的生态可循环装置》从中心的纯碳区域逐渐扩展到周边的纯烟草枝叶层。花园本身并不是一开始就种植好成年植株的,而是依靠最外层播种的草和植物种子随着时间的推移来逐步占领碳化后的土地,改变之前被污染的土壤条件。