A 10-ton steel mill crucible is sculpted into a coffee cup for a giant. Chunks of steel debris from old factories and homes on the World Expo site are reconstructed into traditional Shanghai shikumen (stone-gated) houses.

These extraordinary sculptures are part of the 150-piece Shanghai International Steel Sculpture Festival running through November 10 in northern Baoshan District.

The theme of the 2010 World Expo Shanghai is "Better City, Better Life," and environmentalism and recycling are a big part of it.

That's the spirit of some Shanghai contributions to the steel festival. To clean up the environment, the huge steel works has been relocated and some of the land converted to green space and a permanent 50,000-square meter sculpture park.

A big exhibitor, Shanghai Expo Culture and Art, is a major provider of sculpture, design elements and decoration for the Expo. Twenty sculptures are exhibited, all made of recycled steel collected from the Expo site.

As old factories, steel mills and residences were torn down from the Pudong site, these "relics" were taken to the Baoshan site by artists and transformed into real-size shikumen houses, musical instruments and other objects.

"These works are on display here for the time being," says Liu Yan, an employee of the sculpture studio. "Then they will be transported to Pudong for the future Expo site."

"This steel is decades old so it's also part of the city's history," says Liu. "Shikumen is the most typical symbol of the city's houses, so using the past for the future is of historical meaning."

Another exhibitor, YYRL Design Management, provides design services for restaurants and cafes. Its works feature things it's familiar with - pots and pans, utensils, teapots and so on.

A massive work titled "Picnic on Grass" consists of a "coffee cup," an "apple" and a "pear." The cup is a steel mill crucible weighing more than 10 tons. "Teapot" is made of iron cubes, each weighing around three tons.

"Traditionally steel sculptures are not 'intimate' enough to viewers since they are cold and hard," says Yu Qingyu, owner YYRL Design. "What we try to do is to make these steel works less cold and hard and give them a daily-life feel, because food and catering are close to everyday life."

In daily work, says Yu, "we always put art works in restaurants or cafes. "So adding artistic atmosphere to any environment and 'crossing over' is a normal part of our job."

The site of the sculpture festival is now the Shanghai International Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Park. The site had been occupied by the former Shanghai Ferroalloy Plant, which was officially shut down in 2006.

Baoshan is China's biggest steel maker, but operations were no longer suitable for that part of Shanghai, given the trend of environmentally friendly industry. Around 16 factories and 40 production lines were shut down.

District authorities plan to renovate the complex and turn the area into a new industrial base and development center for environmentally friendly technology and products.

The reconstruction was launched last December. Phase one of the project is almost completed. The core of the site has been turned into a permanent steel sculpture park.

The sculpture festival features not only professional sculptors and designers but also designers from other fields who "cross over" into steel sculpture.

Steel Sculpture Festival

Date: through November 10, 8am-4:30pm

Address: 101 Changjiang Rd W.

Tel: 5682-3456

(Shanghai Daily November 7, 2008)