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.