The project was done for an annual 3 day SACES workshop organised by the Society of Architecture and Civil Engineering Students at the University of Malta. Building something out of waste material was the most instinctive thing to do.
Which we did, but we also wanted to encapsulate an other intangible waste; The waste of ideas from self-inhibition (shame, shyness, distrust)
Used plastic bottles were utilized as a way to contain and store ideas written down on paper; using the concept of the message in a bottle.
On the site of the workshop we found a discarded steel frame previously used as “Monkey bars” in an abandoned playground.
We found this steelframe to be ideal to hold these thoughts and ideas together as one monumental body. Furthermore these ‘monkey bars’ reminds in the act of play, an action were self-inhibition is pushed aside for creativity and individualism to get loose.
The project was used as an interactive sculpture where visitors would go around/below/inside the steel frame, choose their desired bottle and white down whatever thought they feel like to go out in the open. Approximately 480 bottles were used. The translucency of the material made it possible to be used at night as a lantern, attracting more visitors during the night.
The Eco Ark built by MINIWIZ in Taiwan is a building of which the façade and walls are filled with non-load bearing PET bottles. The Eco Ark is a very large building intended originally for the 2010 Taipei International Flora Expo (its length is 130 meters and width 40 meters, the height is 85 metres). Because of the size, public function, and safety requirements filling the façade and walls of such a building with regular PET bottles is hardly possible because it cannot be proven that these requirements will be met. Instead, in the Eco Ark specially developed PET bottles by MiniWIZ Sustainable Energy Development were used – the so-called POLLI-brick. The POLLI-brick is a PET bottle with a highly specific new interlocking shape. It is produced from recycled PET bottles – these are washed, cut, and re-melted into granules that form the base material for the POLLI brick. To create all the required POLLI bricks for the Eco Ark, in total 1.8 million PET bottles were recycled.
The building is designed by Arthur Huang, a graduate of Taiwan and Harvard. The building is supposed to withstand fire and the prevailing strong winds. It is also supposed to cost a third of the regular cost and weigh half of usual construction weight. To add additional stability to the wall fill-in, The POLLI bricks need to be glued with a small amount of silicon between the bottles.
Exterior of EcoARK, night photo: MINIWIZExterior of EcoARK, photo: MINIWIZInterior of EcoArc, photo: MINIWIZPOLLI-brick, photo: MINIWIZPOLLIbrick systemPOLLIbrick sizesThe Feather for Nike, other implementation of POLLIbricks, photo: MINIWIZ
TrussFab isan integrated end-to-end system that allows users to fabricate large scale structures that are sturdy enough to carry human weight. TrussFab achieves the large scale by complementing 3D print with plastic bottles.
Unlike previous systems that stacked bottles as if they were “bricks”, TrussFab considers them as beams and uses them to form structurally sound node link structures based on closed triangles, also known as trusses. TrussFab embodies the required engineering knowledge, allowing non-engineers to design such structures.
While freestanding bottles tend to break easily, truss structures essentially consist of triangles. In such an arrangement, it is the structure that prevents de-formation, not the individual bottle. The main strength of trusses is that they turn lateral forces (aka bending moments) into tension and compression forces along the length of the edges (aka members). Bottles make great members: while they buckle easily when pushed from the side, they are very strong when pushed or pulled along their main axis. TrussFab affords building trusses by combining tetrahedra and octahedra into so-called tetrahedral honeycomb structures.
Conclusion:
TrussFab is an integrated end-to-end system that allows users to fabricate large structures that are sturdy enough to carry human weight on desktop 3D printers. Unlike previous systems that built on up-cycled plastic bottles combined with 3D print, TrussFab considers bottles not as “bricks”, but as beams that form structurally sound node link structures also known as trusses, allowing users to handle the forces resulting from scale and load. TrussFab embodies the required engineering knowledge, allowing non-engineers to design such structures and allows users to validate their designs using integrated structural analysis.
Three giant fish made out of PET bottles was an installation that was part of a United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The three fish were created under the slogan »recycle your attitude« and should resemble a family. The sculptures can be lit at night in various colors.
Dale Wayne works with groups and individuals across the country, transforming recycled plastic bottles to create her installation Dancing on Joy’s Horizon: Bridging Communities. Participants cut and paint recycled plastic bottles, transforming them into glasslike sparkling blossoms and ribbons. Ms. Wayne then attaches their contributions to panels to be installed onto the fence that wraps the Kent County Courthouse during ArtPrize 2014.
Legge Lewis Legge Cup City was a temporary interactive art installation comprised of a 2000- square-foot structure built using rented chain link fence panels at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, September 23–25, 2005, in Austin, Texas. Over the course of three days, concertgoers filled the structure with approximately 25,000 recycled cups and bottles. Budget $5000 Commissioned by and presented in collaboration with Austin Green Art. The walls of the lounge were slowly filled with disposable containers by concert-goers and volunteers, many of whom spent hours arranging and rearranging patterns in the chain link panel walls. Cup City engaged and displayed a portion of the Festival crowds’ stream of consumption, diverting approximately 25,000 used bottles, cups and cans into its ever-changing web.
Cup City inside, photo: Andrea LeggeeggeCup City construction, photo: Andrea LeggeeggeCup City inside, photo: Andrea Leggeegge
Aurora Robson is a Canadian artist who has been working with garbage for over 10 years. During this time around 80 000 PET bottles went through her hands and easily 100 000 caps. In The Great Indoors instalation she had collected 15 000 PET bottles to assemble an exotic looking tunnel in a gallery. Not only she had collected the bottles on her own, but she also engages homeless and poor people in the collecting of bottles.
Currently, she is not only organising a collective of artists working with plastic debris called Project Vortex but she is also teaching a course on how to work with garbage.
Aurora Robson The Great Indoors 18 September – 26 October 2008
ECO Project with students of the Experimental studio Achten/Nováková at FA CTU Prague2014. Relax square was showing one minute production of PET bottles. It took only few hours to assemble.
TrussFab is an integrated end-to-end system that allows users to fabricate large scale structures that are sturdy enough to carry human weight. TrussFab achieves the large scale by complementing 3D print with plastic bottles.
