It’s a question on the lips of anyone with any little bit of ecological conscience these days; what to do with the millions of plastic bags that have become the leading source of global pollution, putting a stranglehold on our environment. Well, if you’ve got around 1,500 of the little buggers – along with the assistance of a gang of students from Politecnico di Milano – you can transform them into a beautiful architectural experiment.

After all, that’s exactly what design studios Ghigos Ideas and LOGh have just gone and done for the STUDI APERTI Arts Festival, in the sleepy northern Italian village of Ameno. Using the bags, a lot of hard work and the motto that “nothing can be neither created nor destroyed, everything can only be transformed”, the students and designers have transformed an unfinished public building into a beguiling statement on modern living.