UK-based studio VATRAA has created a monument in Milan, Italy composed of thousands of plastic water bottles. The installation, titled Plastic Monument, seeks to bring attention to the issue of plastic pollution.

“Some plastics last up to 1000 years in our landfills and oceans while others might never biodegrade,” the studio notes. “We could argue that plastic waste is our legacy to many  generations to come.”

In response, the studio created a monument in the form of a trilithon, drawing similarities with the ancient Stonehenge site in the UK. The installation seeks to create a stark contrast between the single-use, disposable nature of plastic waste and the timeless nature of ancient monuments, reminding visitors that “what we are doing today might stay on Earth forever.”

To complete the monument, which stands 25 feet tall, 16,000 plastic bottles were pressed together into bales, and wrapped in a metal mesh. The piece will now stand at its site in Milan for one year, with VATRAA having larger ambitions of the installation touring the world in an effort to encourage a new relationship between humanity and plastic.

"We had to go back and ask ourselves what is the purest form of construction that our ancestors left to us," said VATRAA founding partner Bogdan Rusu. "All roads led us to the trilithon – the most basic form of structure, the beginning of any construction as we know it, made of two pillars and a lintel, a form that is so elegantly embodied by Stonehenge."

"The installation is not designed to be a beautiful, but to makes us think about the consequences of our actions in the long run," Rusu added. "We hope that this will inspire people of influence or regular plastic users to consider the bigger impact of the decisions they make today."

The piece is one of several spatial installations recently featured on our editorial. Earlier this month, in the lead-up to the 2022 World Cup, artist Olafur Eliasson unveiled a mirrored installation in the Qatar desert which asked people to “look down at the earth and self.” In September, meanwhile, an MIT-sponsored installation at the Mextrópoli Architecture and City Festival in Mexico City showcased the schools recent innovations in material science.