Gallery: AnneMarie van Splunter Reuses...

< back to story

Slideshow

image 1 of 7

view this image in original size ( 537 x 382 )

According to the Recycling Revolution website, consumers in the United States discard 220,000,000 automobile tires per year. And that's just one country. With stats like this it is easy to embrace AnneMarie van Splunter's conceptual design for 'Rubber Tree', a playground that utilizes tires headed for landfills by re-purposing them as primary building materials.

Conceived as a playground for refugee children in Thailand, van Splunter’s ‘Rubber Tree’ envisions a play area constructed entirely of reused and sustainable materials. The recycled tires that give form to the tree are held in place by conjoined lengths of bamboo that thread throughout the structure without need for metal hardware. What’s more, van Splunter sees the tires as being used “from cradle to cradle”. “Tires are made from the latex of the rubber tree,” says van Splunter in her artist statement. “And now they have served their duty, becoming the sculpture of a rubber tree.”

+ AnneMarie van Splunter

via Collabcubed

2 Responses to “AnneMarie van Splunter Reuses Tires to Create a ‘Rubber Tree’ Playground”

Zerowaster says:

September 29, 2011 at 3:53 pm

Out of those 220 million tires that were excessed just this year in just this one country, how many were beneficially used in making these sculptures?

I love the sculptures and the ideas of how to make them. They look wonderful. But the story should not be sold as any kind of way to reuse tires. It is not.

At Zero Waste Institute we try to find ways to reuse all of all unwanted products. It is possible. We may have something to say about the rest of the 199 million tires that have no reuse modality at present.
Landdesigner says:

November 28, 2011 at 1:00 pm

Very creative. would be very interesting to build, however it might be a wise idea to paint the tires a different colour so that it doesn’t become to hot to play on in the summer.

Leave a Comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

Please note that gratuitous links to your site are viewed as spam and may result in removed comments.