"Skyscraper" - the Bruges Whale, landed in Singapore at the ArtScience Museum of Marina Bay Sands on November 8th at the start of its Asian Migration Tour - “Have We Breached the Limit?”.
The 11-metre tall sculpture made from recovered ocean plastic and steel support, totaling 5 tonnes, is designed by award-winning architects and designers Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang from the acclaimed StudioKCA in New York. The piece is an interpretation of the theme “liquid city” for the 2018 Bruges Triennial. Inspired by the biggest liquid city on the planet – the ocean. Jason and Lesley collected as much plastic from the seas over four months to form the basis of the installation.

Brought to Asia by the NGO, Ocean Recovery Alliance, StudioKCA’s sculpture comes from work with the Hawaii Wildlife Fund which helped to collect the plastic used in Skyscraper over a period of four months. After sorting the plastic by size and colour, as well as working on the engineering of the internal steel structure, the firm ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for the fabrication and shipping of the enormous sculpture.

“A whale, breaching from the water, is the first ‘skyscraper of the sea’, and as the largest mammal in the water, it felt like the right form for our piece to take in order to show the scope and scale of the problem,” said Jason Klimoski, STUDIOKCA.

Skyscraper, originally installed in the canal at Jan Van Eyck Plein, was the centrepiece of the 2018 Bruges Triennial and visited by over 380,000 people who took and shared over 2 million images of the installation on social media. It then moved to Utrecht in the Netherlands in 2019, to be part of a nearly yearlong campaign by Utrecht University and the City of Utrecht to educate citizens about plastic waste and its effects on marine life.

“We created Skyscraper to serve as a physical example of why we need to change how we use and dispose of plastic in the world today,” said Lesley Chang, STUDIOKCA.

Ocean Recovery Alliance focuses on creative solutions, innovations, building awareness, and education to reduce plastic pollution and works globally to spread this message. It has partnered with StudioKCA to bring Skyscraper – one of the first public art exhibits to illustrate the impact of plastic pollution – on its inaugural tour of Asia that will unite key cities with a common cause and inspire communities to do better in tackling this issue.

“Ocean Recovery Alliance has always been committed to creating strategic, long-term solutions to reduce plastic pollution on land and water,” said Douglas Woodring, Founder and Managing Director, Ocean Recovery Alliance. “It is a wonderful opportunity to be able to bring Skyscraper to different communities and countries and use it to raise awareness around this pressing issue. We are excited for the positive impact we are sure this will have on society at large.” The exhibit is supported by the ArtScience Museum, as well as Swiss-based Kuehne + Nagel, one of the world’s leading logistics companies, which helps to ship the whale from Europe to various locations in Asia, and Security Cargo Network for the freight forwarding and logistics.

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Thanks to Hazel Haze @hazeofglory for the great photos and time lapse, and also Rhema Events and Pico for their installation help, and Jimmy Leung for the video!

The “Skyscraper’s” Asia Pacific Tour, “Have We Breached the Limit?” has been organized by Ocean Recovery Alliance, an NGO based in Hong Kong and California, which has focused on solutions and innovations for reducing plastic pollution on a global scale, including work with the World Bank, UN Environment and Clinton Global Initiative. They are the founder of the Plasticity Forum, focused on solutions for second-life plastic, the Plastic Disclosure Project (PDP), and the Global Alert platform, each of which helps to create a world without the plastic footprint. The founder, Douglas Woodring, was awarded the 2018 Prince’s Award from Prince Albert of Monaco for his work for the ocean and is an honoree of the Int’l Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame.

About STUDIOKCA and creators, Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang

STUDIOKCA is a multidisciplinary art, architecture, and design studio based in Brooklyn, New York founded by Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang in 2012. Their practice focuses on creating unique sculptures and spaces that respond to site or program requirements in imaginative ways, with the goal of bringing joy and wonder to those who see and interact with their work, while raising awareness of real-world issues.

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