A DOWN UNDER CHINESE NEW YEAR

According to the Chinese Lunar New Year, 2010 is the year of the tiger. To honor the ‘year of the tiger,’ Australia has placed giant ‘zhezhi’ tigers in front of the Sydney Customs House to help bring awareness to the endangered status of the tiger. These big cats are made of fully recyclable materials, aluminium and barrisol and are brought to life with low energy LED lighting. The crazy thing about this design is that the tigers are almost 8 feet high and 23 feet long yet weigh a little over 440 pounds.

Zhezhi is Chinese for paper folding (also known by its Japanese name ‘origami’).  According to Chris Bosse, Australian director of LAVA (the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture Association) “We also believe that humour belongs to architecture, too, and so the tigers are playing soccer to kick off the FIFA World Cup starting later this year.”

If you happen to be down under between Febuary 11th and March 14th make sure you head over to the Customs House and take a look at these beautiful tigers.