Designed by holdUP & BLOO NATION, the Waving Wall of Chalkwell is an art installation commissioned by Metal comprising of over 1200, 19L water cooler bottles, demonstrating the vast journey water takes as well as the amount of water used in the production of certain products; a few of which have been depicted in small cabinets, along with information regarding their water consumption. More images and a brief description after the break.
“The average Brit only sees 3% of the water that they consume.” BLOO Nation uses art to raise awareness about the concept of embedded water: the volume of water used to produce a product in various steps of the production chain.
The Waving Wall attempts to help visualize the vast amounts of ‘invisible’ water required to produce these items using a very simple calculation: assuming that every water cooler bottle is filled, there would be approximately 22,800L of water based on this fact. This entire installation would only make up about 2 pairs of jeans or 5 beef steaks!
In the UK, we individually soak up 4645L of water on a daily basis, that’s 50 bathtubs worth of water! The problem with this is that two-thirds of this water is imported through products, from countries that are already suffering from water shortages. There is an impending water crisis.
“In 2025, more than half of the world’s population will be facing water-based vulnerability.”
Architects: holdup & BLOO NATION Location: Southend-on-Sea, UK Design Team: Guillaume Jounet, Remy Bardin Event: Solomon Monk’s Pump House at METAL Client: BLOO NATION Year: 2011 Budget: 5,000£ Dimensions: L=40m x l=5m x H=3,5m Photographs: HOLDUP Video: HOLDUP Sponsors: 4 ACES Liquid Packaging Structure: 1200 water cooler bottles Binder: double-sided polyurethane foam tape
