Arts News

Artist gives new meaning to trashing a hotel

Jun 24, 2010, 11:30 GMT

Rome - German conceptual artist HA Schult has erected the world's first hotel made out of trash in Rome only a few steps from the Vatican and Castel Sant'Angelo.

Schult used a total of 12 tonnes of trash collected on beaches along European coasts to form the outer walls of the three-room structure. The trash was cleaned in Germany before being transported to Rome for use in the project.

Cans, tyres, newspaper, socks and even discarded cameras, footballs and love letters decorate the hotel. Schult hopes his art project will draw attention to the amount of trash produced in the world and confront people with the situation.

'We are in trash time. We product trash and we will be trash,' said Schult who erected the hotel to mark World Environment Day. Only running water and electricity were lacking inside the hotel.

Its interior otherwise was complete with colourful sheets and parquet floors. Among its first guests was Danish top fashion model Helena Christensen and a 53-year-old London man and his daughter. They spent the night before World Environment Day in the hotel.

The trash used to make the hotel comes from all over the world, according to Schult. This is symbolic because trash is a worldwide problem, he said.

'We are living on a planet of garbage,' said Schult, who has used garbage to create art in various projects since the 1960s to point out the increasing amount of trash.

Among his best known projects is Trash People, which consisted of an army of human-like figures that he set up at numerous prominent locations, including Rome's Piazza del Popolo, Brooklyn Bridge in New York, the pyramids at Giza and Red Square in Moscow.