The Hills Are Alive… With the World’s Largest Picnic Blanket?!
The green rolling hills of Switzerland are now the home to one of the coolest art installations we’ve ever seen — a giant picnic blanket.
Everyone loves picnics in the park. Normally, it’s an intimate time, set aside for a romantic date or a way to spend time with your cute, little family. But now you can literally invite the whole world to hang out on the lawn with you — even share the same picnic blanket. There’s plenty of space for everyone to hang out comfortably on Switzerland’s BIG NIK.
Artistic brothers, Frank and Patrik Riklin started BIG NIK in an effort to create a unique place for people to come together to share stories and traditions. Taking advantage of local textiles and resources, they’ve designed an extraordinary project that allows people to gather and enjoy the Swiss countryside.
As you can probably imagine, the two founders aren’t solely responsible for creating this gigantic masterpiece. Since their start in 2012, they’ve enlisted a lot of help from other people in the community (and encouraged peeps to participate, too). Collection sites are set up around the area for locals to donate red and white textiles, from blankets to towels to bedsheets to shower curtains.
Throughout the year, the recycled fabric is transformed into modules at public sewing workshops. And in case you’re wondering, a module is a 15 foot piece of fabric created by sewing four textiles together like a checkerboard. Each module is outfitted with Velcro fasteners so that it can easily attach to existing blanket. Once the summer rolls around, volunteers of all ages unpack the modules from the year and connect them to the gargantuan patchwork blanket for visitors to enjoy.
Currently, BIG NIK is made up of 252,144 pieces of fabric — which may seem big (uh, it is; it’s the size of 100 football fields), but the plans are to keep on expanding this massive checkerboard ‘til 2040. We don’t know about you guys, but we can’t wait to see where it’ll be next summer, let alone in 26 years.
Does BIG NIK make you want to visit Switzerland immediately? Talk to us in the comments below or hit us up on Facebook!
(h/t Designboom)
