In September, architect Sun Dayong(Founding partner of Penda China) was invited to design an installation work for Design China Beijing exhibition to reflect the ecological design concept and advocate a new attitude toward life known as “Less is Love”. Every year, human beings are dumping 8 million tons of garbage into the ocean, jeopardizing not only ocean life but also the life of our own. Faced with this serious ecological problem, we human beings must change our traditional way of living. This work, titled “Less is Love”, proposes a new concept of life, i.e., to reduce unnecessary waste and encourage people to sort out waste, which actually should be classified as misplaced resources. Only by correctly understanding and reasonably recycling waste can we reduce it from the source, relieve the environmental burden and pressure caused by human beings, and eventually benefit ourselves.

This 4-meter-tall installation in the size of 8m*8m is fabricated with metal scaffoldings and 60 trash cans. There are six types of domestic waste, i.e. kitchen waste, disposable bamboo & wood tableware and tissue paper, plastic foam, printed matter, metal & glass, hazardous and dangerous items. These are the most common wastes in our daily life. If they can be effectively separated from the source, the workload of recycling staff in the community can be much reduced. Therefore we should start the change from our behaviors. With the elaborately designed classification signage in enlarged characters and lovely images, the trash cans are no longer the byword of dirt and mess. As the designer wishes to make the trash cans a beautiful rainbow in the city, the installation adopts a semi-circle structure which incorporates the designer’s inspiring idea into the structural rationality.

This work was first presented at the main venue of Design China Beijing at National Agricultural Exhibition Center, and then invited to the themed exhibition Dear Trash during Beijing Design Week. All trash cans will be given away to the communities implementing waste classification after the exhibition, thus encouraging the engagement of more citizens into the waste classification.

▼装置细节，details of the installation