Rising Moon sculpture for the Mid-Autumn Festival 2013

This year’s highlight at the Lantern Wonderland in Victoria Park in Hong Kong is a sculpture called Rising Moon.

You can already see it from quite a distance – it is a hemisphere that is about 10 metres in height and 20 meters in diameter that quickly changes colours (to produce different lunar phases), in rhythm to the music that is playing on the speakers in the park.

It is built on top of an artificial lake, so that the darkness of the water reflects the lights above it.

Can you guess what the Rising Moon is made out of? It’s actually something you see everywhere in Hong Kong. We also have it in our office and use it every day …

… it is made out of 7,000 recycled plastic bottles. The ones on the outside are the large 5-gallon bottles that you insert into the water cooler socket.

Inside the dome, which can host up to 100 people at a time, are 2,300 smaller bottles suspended in the air. Those are just the standard, 1.5-litre bottles, that you can get everywhere in Hong Kong.

It is a very clever design, featuring water bottles and LED lights, by four young architectural designers, Mr. Siu Kwok Kin Stanley, Mr. Chan Pui Hong Aden, Mr. Hui Chun Hoi Eddie and Mr. He Yiteng, whose design won the Gold Award in the Lantern Wonderland Design Competition.

The consistent message across all Hong Kong mid-autumn festival activities this year is recycling – not just of the huge moon cake boxes that will pile up across the city, but also of plastic bottles.

After the exhibition, the plastic bottles that formed the Rising Moon will be collected by the Yan Oi Tong EcoPark Plastic Resources Recycling Centre for recycling.

You can visit the Rising Moon sculpture today from 6:30pm to midnight and on September 20-22 from 6:30pm to 11pm.