Cornell University: AAP’s Ecological Action Lab highlights plastic and water waste with Tallinn Architecture Biennale sculpture

Unveiled September 7 at the sixth Tallinn Architecture Biennale, Friendship WC (Water Chandelier) is an architectural exhibit created by the Ecological Action Lab (EAL), led by Caroline O’Donnell, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP).

This year’s biennial, titled “Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism,” explores architectural strategies of local production, self-sufficiency, and operations that use by-products of urban life, replacing the traditional linear systems of “make, use, and dispose” with circular systems that aim to limit material and resource loss. Embracing that theme, EAL’s project is largely built out of Friendship Bottles — plastic containers that have been designed to be reused as construction material — arranged as candles in a chandelier. The bottles release water, rather than light, via a Japanese technique known as sōzu in which the bottles fill with water, tip to release under the power of gravity, and reset to fill again, in an ongoing spectacle of water emission.