Most architects look at ocean plastic and see a crisis. Yufeng Tu saw a building material. Ocean Vortex, the speculative floating parliament he conceived, does exactly that — and in doing so, reimagines what civic architecture can mean when the crisis it addresses becomes the material it’s built from.

Article imported: Sun May 31, 2026, 3:23 pm

Most of us have a pencil holder we never actually chose. It’s the ceramic mug you retired from coffee duty, or the branded giveaway from a conference two years ago, or the squat plastic cup that came bundled with a stapler. It works. It holds pens. But you have never once looked at it and thought, “I genuinely love that thing.”

Article imported: Sat May 30, 2026, 6:20 pm