Deconstructed Big Fish

This unique tote bag was designed by architects Pearse Gillan and Rachel Murphy as part of a live ‘In the bag’ challenge during the RSUA’s annual Perfectly Proportioned Quiz of Architecture and Other Things in 2025. Pearse and Rachel’s Deconstructed Big Fish was voted the top design from a brilliant array of proposals. See more here.

The Big Fish, also known as the Salmon of Knowledge, is a Belfast landmark which is popular with tourists and is a local meeting point. It is a 10m long sculpture by John Kindness which is clad in ceramic tiles that give an insight to Belfast through newspaper clippings and children’s drawings. See more here.

To develop the concept from the live hand drawing into a finalised design, Pearse photographed and catalogued every tile on the west-facing side of the fish before tracing them digitally. The final stage involved arranging the tiles into a new composition while preserving the relative scale and individuality of all 290 tiles.

Image 4 and 5 credits: Ardfern on Wikipedia.