Art Articles & Reviews

The Tallest Sand Castle in the World

On September 1^st, 2017, the jury from the Guinness World Records was in Duisburg, Germany to assess the measurements of an incredible sand castle carved by 15 sand sculptors from around the world, 9 men and 6 women. Over 3,500 tons of sand had been compacted from bottom to top in plywood forms a week before the sculpting began. The sponsor of the project was Shauinsland Reisen, the second largest company in Germany and the project director was Sandcity, an event company based in Düsseldorf. The theme was architecture, famous buildings from around the world and symbols of summer holidays and large logos of the sponsoring agency. We had a rough sketch of all the elements and we decided as we went what to place where to have the best composition.

I was thrilled to be part of this exciting project and to be the only Canadian and French carver invited. I had a good feeling that we would beat the previous Guinness record of 14m 83 awarded in 2016 to a team from Puri, India : Sudarsan Pattnaik and 45 of his students from his sand sculpting school.

The previous attempt in Duisburg had failed last year when the top third of the castle collapsed before all the wooden forms had been removed from the base.

This time, we were all elated as no cracks appeared after the last forms were removed. We even carved fake cracks throughout the castle.

The weather was perfect, sunny and hot, except for the last two days of rain . Once a section was finished it was screened several times a day with a mixture of water and white glue to prevent the wind from blowing the sand away and the rain from damaging the finished surface. The base of the sculpture, 125 meters in circumference, was all soft sand that had to be compacted and shaped before sculpting. A lot of details had disappeared after the last heavy rain and a few small collapses had occurred. On August 31^st, we all had to finish up our section and then do some repairs. My section was about 10 meters high and 8 meters wide and involved architecture, buildings of all kinds, a giant sea turtle and a variety of oversized seashells. We even added about 50 turtle eggs underneath the turtle and decided to carve some baby turtle hatching.

It was great to work with all these amazing sand sculptors from Australia, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Hungary and the Czech Republic in a large former industrial park. The public was in awe and the children were even more excited. I remember one little girl pointing at one of the houses at the top, saying “I want to live there” in German. I answered “Me too” in German and she smiled. People kept asking if it was special sand and how we had managed to create this masterpiece.

Patricia Leguen, Sculptor

See more of Patricia's sculpture on her Website