Picture credit: An AI-generated image, which looks a little like the Canary Wharf-based whale sculpture
Spent coffee grounds from Canary Wharf’s cafes and restaurants have been turned into a base to support a recycled plastic whale sculpture. Rising up out of the water, the 12-metre sculpture is anchored with the coffee-concrete mix, which was pumped into place beneath the water’s surface. This gives the impression that the whale is breaching – jumping out of the water like a real-life whale.
Having not yet had a chance to visit this sculpture, the picture above is a representation of the whale, created with ChatGPT. This is something I wanted to try as an experiment. It took four prompts to create this, and although it still doesn’t look much like the real-life sculpture, it’s not bad. (In the first version, ChatGPT added a plinth, which I asked it to remove.) It’s fascinating to keep testing these tools, as they change and improve at a rapid rate.
Going back to the sculpture itself, it’s part of the permanent collection at Canary Wharf, so you have plenty of time to see it when you’re in the area, as will I if I have a reason to be there.
The four-storey sculpture, Whale on the Wharf (Skyscraper), was created with this shocking fact in mind: there is more plastic in our oceans, by weight, than there are whales. An estimated 150 million tonnes of plastic is clogging up our oceans. To highlight this, StudioKCA, a New York architecture and design firm, worked with the Hawaii Wildlife Fund to collect plastic that had washed up on beaches for the intricate mosaic sculpture.
In keeping with the eco theme, and with a nod to the circular economy, the concrete base for the sculpture contains spent coffee grounds from the area, along with biochar sourced from UK fast-growing hardwoods. A specialist civil engineering diving company was brought in to pump the concrete into position. The sculpture is supported by a braced steelwork structure, made of recovered and reused steel.
With Canary Wharf’s establishments producing 190 tonnes of spent coffee grounds each year, they may need to create a few more sculptures in the future to put this waste to good use.
I wonder if this is something they may commit to, as there are already more than 100 pieces of art at Canary Wharf, making it London’s largest collection of outdoor public art. If you visit to see the whale, you may want to take a look at their art map, so you can seek out the other stand-alone sculptures and architectural works in the vicinity.
In the meantime, if you need any assistance with the structural elements of an upcoming project, please do get in touch.
