Rachel Levin is a popular art lecturer who often lectures at the Bernard Betel Centre for our weekly Tuesday Lifelong Learning Lectures. In her series of ‘Unconventional Materials’ she introduces artists from all over the world using unconventional materials to create their art.
Israeli Recycling Artists
Upcycling soup cans into forts and shelter.
Recycling food cans is good for the environment. People who are avid DIYers would use food cans for decorative projects, or provide solutions for organizing.
Many crafters use cans for practical usage adding colour and embellishments to small projects such as pencil holders on the desk, kitchen utensil holders, candle holders, wine racks and more. The list of ideas is almost endless.
Like many other artists around the world, Israeli artists love to recycle everyday ordinary items into beautiful, practical art projects.
The Soup Can Pavilion designers, Lihi, Roee and Galit, chose tin cans for the ‘Bat-Yam International Biennale of landscape urbanism’ in 2008. The location chosen was an empty lot surrounded by a grove of palm trees planted by the municipality of Bat-Yam.
The three designers chose that lot to erect their Soup Pavilion while the lot remains “on hold” for a construction project sometime in the future. The palm trees create an ambience of an oasis, the shiny tin cans building blocks creates new concept of using a familiar household material in a new context.
The location of this original pavilion, Bat-Yam, a city along the beach south of Tel-Aviv, is an example of just how creative it is possible to get.
At first glance the pavilion looks like a complicated project, where lots of work was invested in order to create a structure of this kind. It’s actually quite simple. The cans are connected to each other and held upright by steel rods, plenty of light penetrates the entire structure.
The cans are open at both ends so that pavilion visitors can see out and people passing by can see in. The Bat-Yam pavilion looks like a honeycomb; it transformed the unoccupied lot into an inviting public space.
The International Biennale of Landscape Urbanism
The main objective of the ‘International Biennale of Landscape Urbanism’ in Bat-Yam is to arise a discuss how urban activities influence the quality of life in the city.
The biennale objective is to transform the city and make it a better place to live. The exhibition, held every two years throughout Bat-Yam, offers exciting solutions to issues relating to the urban landscape.
