"Here's something you don't expect to sit on: surgical masks. Nearly 10,000 of them, to be exact. But that's exactly what Design PY created in Hong Kong's Tai Kok Tsui neighborhood with Tidal Stories, a spiraling urban installation that quite literally traces where the ocean used to be. The concept is brilliant in its simplicity. Tai Kok Tsui was once a coastal area, but over a century of land reclamation pushed the shoreline further and further away."
"What makes this project especially clever is how it tackles two challenges at once. First, there's the environmental angle. The pandemic left us with a staggering amount of medical waste, and those 9,200 upcycled surgical masks in the installation are just a tiny fraction of what ended up in landfills and oceans. By incorporating them into public furniture, Design PY transforms waste into something functional and meaningful. Second, there's the cultural preservation piece."
Design PY installed Tidal Stories, a helical seating structure in Tai Kok Tsui that maps the neighborhood's former shoreline using 9,200 upcycled surgical masks. Tai Kok Tsui lost its coastline through over a century of land reclamation, and the installation makes that hidden history visible within public space. The project addresses environmental concerns by repurposing pandemic medical waste into functional furniture while simultaneously preserving and revealing local memory. The installation is actively used by elderly residents, workers, and passersby, and metal tabletops engraved with references to the area’s industrial and coastal past serve as educational elements and an informal museum.
Read at Yanko Design - Modern Industrial Design News
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