Bottle wall
This article needs additional citations for verification. (July 2011) |
A bottle wall is a
Bottle wall construction
This is a building construction style which usually uses
Construction
Construction materials
Although bottle walls can be constructed in many different ways, they are typically made on a
Bottles can also be duct taped together to create a window-type effect. Two similar size bottles can be taped together with the openings allowing a light passageway. This also traps air and creates a small amount of insulation. Filling glass with liquid that will be subjected to freezing and thawing is not a good idea, but is useful if the glass is protected from temperature extremes.
Heat sink
When the bottles are filled with a (dark) liquid, or other dark material, the wall can function as a thermal mass, absorbing solar radiation during the day and radiating it back into the space at night, thus dampening diurnal temperature swings. This may be a pleasant feature for colder climates - but can turn a room into an oven in hotter climates.
Binding mixtures
A typical mortar mix is 3:1 mason sand to a pozzolan (
Bottle houses throughout history
The use of empty vessels in construction dates back at least to ancient Rome, where many structures used empty
It is believed that the first bottle house was constructed in 1902 by William F. Peck in Tonopah, Nevada. The house was built using 10,000 bottles of J. Hostetter's Stomach Bitters which consisted of various herbs in a solution of 47% alcohol. The Peck house was demolished in the early 1980s.[citation needed]
Around 1905, Tom Kelly built his house in
Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, has a bottle house, made from over 3,000 whiskey bottles, that it uses as an "Indian Trader" store today. The house is a remake of the Rhyolite Bottle House replicated from photos taken by Walter Knott in the early 1950s.
Another famous bottle house site was built by the self-taught senior citizen Tressa "Grandma " Prisbrey. Located in Simi Valley, California, Bottle Village is lauded by art scholars, The State of California, The National Register of Historic Places and in exhibitions, as a major artistic achievement. Beginning construction in 1956 at age 60, and working until 1981, Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey transformed her 1/3 acre lot into Bottle Village, an otherworld of shrines, wishing wells, walkways, random constructions, plus 15 life size structures all made from found objects placed in mortar. The name "Bottle Village" comes from the structures themselves - made of tens of thousands of bottles unearthed via daily visits to the dump.
The Washington Court Bottle House in Ohio was made with 9,963 bottles of all sizes and colors. The builder was a bottle collector and, to display his collection, he had them built into this house which was on display at Meyer's Modern Tourist Court. In Alexandria, Louisiana, there is a bottle-house gift shop that still stands today. The bottle house was constructed by Drew Bridges who used bottles from his drugstore. There are about 3,000 bottles used as masonry units with railroad ties used as the framing structure.
The
The Heineken WOBO (World Bottle)
While on a world tour of Heineken factories in 1960, Alfred Heineken had an epiphany on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, where he saw many bottles littering the beach because the island had no economic means of returning the bottles to the bottling plants from which they had come. He was also concerned with the lack of affordable building materials and the inadequate living conditions plaguing Curaçao's lower-class. Envisioning a solution for these problems, he asked Dutch architect N. John Habraken to design what he called "a brick that holds beer." [3] A similar project was the Block-o-beer-bottle developed in 1959 by the east German Radeberger Brewery.[4]
Over the next three years, the Heineken WOBO went through a design process. Some of the early designs were of interlocking and self-aligning bottles. The idea derived from a belief that the need for mortar would add complexity and expense to the bottle wall's intended simplicity and affordability. Some designs proved to be effective building materials, but too heavy and slow-forming to be economically produced. Other designs were rejected by Heineken based on aesthetic preferences. In the end, the bottle that was selected was a compromise between the previous designs.
The bottle was designed to be interlocking, laid horizontally and bonded with cement mortar with a silicon additive. The necks were short and fitted into a large recess in the base, the bottles were square section with dimpled sides to bond with the mortar. A 10 ft (3.0 m) x 10 ft (3.0 m) shack would take approximately 1,000 bottles to build. In 1963, 100,000 WOBOs were produced in two sizes, 350 and 500 mm. This size difference was necessary in order to bond the bottles when building a wall, in the same way as a half brick is necessary when building with bricks. Unfortunately, most of them are destroyed and as such, they are now very rare and have become a collector's item.
Only two WOBO structures exist
Bottle house of Ganja
The Bottle house of Ganja was built between 1966-67.
Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew
Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew is a temple in Thailand that was built by monks out of bottles.
See also
Media related to Bottles as building material at Wikimedia Commons
References
- ^ "Architecture".
- ^ Building a bottle wall
- ^ a b http://inhabitat.com/heineken-wobo-the-brick-that-holds-beer/ HEINEKEN WOBO: A Beer Bottle That Doubles as a Brick by Ali Kriscenski. Retrieved 27 August 2012
- ^ "Radeberger Geschichte". Archived from the original on 2015-02-10. Retrieved 2015-02-10.
- Agilitynut. Mar 2000/Feb 2007. Seltzer, Debra Jane. Mar 2007 <https://web.archive.org/web/20070314045052/http://www.agilitynut.com/h/otherbh.html>.
- The Goat House. Georgia Tech. Mar 2007 <https://web.archive.org/web/20070617181339/http://maven.gtri.gatech.edu/sfi/gradcourses/goathouse/MBWall.html>.
Books and publications
- Pawley, Martin. Building for Tomorrow: Putting Waste to Work. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1982.
- Earthship Biotecture Earthship Biotecture. Mar 2007
- Warmke, Annie & Jay. "Building a Vaulted Strawbale Building." Blue Rock Station Publishing, 2006
- Warmke, Annie & Jay. "Building a Plastic Bottle Greenhouse." Blue Rock Station Publishing, 2008