(Full view) 'San Francisco Street Shadow' in Alicante, Spain
(View from below) 'San Francisco Street Shadow' in Alicante, Spain
Ever wonder how much wasted paper a newspaper generates? Running down the rabbit hole of the Internet, I found that the average New York Times Sunday edition produces 8 million pounds (3.6 million kilograms) of waste paper. On average, a year’s worth of newspaper (one paper per day) produces 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of waste paper.* And how about all those free (unsolicited) newspapers? Research by the London Municipal Centers estimate that the daily distribution of free newspapers in London creates over 100 extra tons of paper waste each year. In the city of Madrid, there are nearly a million (approximately 938,000) copies of free publications distributed daily, most of which end up in garbage cans.
In response to these disturbing facts, Spanish architectural collective Meva has created a unique installation which recycles discarded newspapers. Meva members folded hundreds of newspaper pages into paper windmills and hung them on a nylon mesh creating a suspended sculpture. ‘San Francisco Street Shadow‘ was hung over a street in Alicante, Spain, providing shade to passersbys underneath. An indoor version of ‘San Francisco Street Shadow‘ was hung in the courtyard of the Ministry of the Environment in Madrid, Spain.
Explaining their installation, Meva said, ‘the windmills are organized to provide shadow with a simple changing pattern, each of them rotates and balances on its own to the rhythm of the gentle summer breeze.’
*Source: Audubon Magazine, vol. 92 (March 1990), p. 4.
(View of cast shadow) 'San Francisco Street Shadow' in Alicante, Spain
(Full view) 'San Francisco Street Shadow' in Alicante, Spain
(view from below) courtyard of the Ministry of the Environment, Madrid, Spain
(view from above) courtyard of the Ministry of the Environment, Madrid, Spain
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