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.
A thirteen-meters high Christmas Tree placed in the town square in Kaunas was assembled from 32 000 PET bottles attached together with cable ties. The author is an artist Jolanta Smidtienė, who is dealing with the christmas decorations of the town for longer time want to create something different each year.
The energy saved for the material was used for the lighting of the tree, where 40 000 light bulbs were installed. Nevertheless, the message of the artificial Christmas tree is obvious: Let’s think about ecology and our own consumption at least during the Christmas time!
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.
Giant Fish at night, photo: Alexandre MacieiraGiant Fish surface detail, photo: Alexandre Macieira
The floating geodesic dome Rising Moon was designed for the autumn festival “lantern wonderland” 2013 in Victoria Park in Hong Kong by the local architecture firm named Daydreamers. The dome has a 20 meter diameter, and for the surface covering 4800 five gallon (22,7 liter) polycarbonate water containers were used. These containers were mounted into a network of electric sockets with LED lighting. The sphere’s surface was triangulated – each triangle carried about 28 water containers. The main structure is a steel rod frame. The bottles were chosen for their resemblance with traditional Chinese beacon-shaped lanterns. In the interior of the dome 2300 regular PET bottles are suspended from the ceiling providing the effect of the sea. Since the pavilion is floating, the whole appears to be a complete sphere because of the reflection of the water. By manipulating the LED lights, multiple phases of the moon can be simulated on the surface – hence the name of the pavilion. Additionally in the top of the pavilion there is an opening in the roof which allows the real moonlight pass through the pavilion. According to Daydreamers architects, the whole building can be de-assembled and the parts (bottles) recycled.
Construction schemaMoon reflection diagram: pic. Jay Ho Ka WongDetail of exteriorThe entrance, photo: John PalisInterior design, photo: Vincent KarRising Moon during daylight, photo: Bob Cheung
Head in the clouds is a pavilion built on the occasion of figment’s 2013 ‘city of dreams art celebration’ in New York. The sculpture was assembled by Jason Klimoski and Wesley Chang from KCA architects, who needed 53,780 recycled plastic bottles and milk containers – this amount is consumed in NYC in about 1 hour. While the milk jugs form the exterior cloud visually, the interior is created from smaller 16 and 24 ounce PET bottles filled with blue colour water evocating the feeling of being in the middle of a cloud. This all is held up with an aluminium frame. The structure can shelter approximately 50 people. The installation ran for approximately 2 months from february 2013.
Pavilion Head in the Clouds, photo: Chuck ChoiHead in the Clouds section, picture: Lesley ChangHead in the Clouds interiorHead in the Clouds exterior
The Coca Cola Bow created by Studio Penda is an example of advertising and recycling combined. It was designed and built at the occasion of the 2nd Beijng University Creation Expo. The bow is a rigid structure of which the surface is covered with a chicken wire pattern. The maze opening of the chicken wire has the exact right dimension so that a PET bottle can be screwed into it. The bottles needed for the object were collected in cooperation with Coca Cola and universities around Beijng; for every 10 empty Coca Cola bottles handed in one free Cola Cola bottle was rewarded.
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
The project of United Bottle was developed by Dirk Hebel, Tobias Klauser and Jörg Stollmann. It is a PET water bottle and a building unit at the same time, which can be normally recycled. It can be distributed in six-packs on containers and collected in plastic waste containers. This makes the bottle suitable for application in catastrophy-hit regions where both drinking water and building material are scarce and in need. The bottle can be used repeatedly for water storage, but there is also a second use: it can be filled with heavy material such as sand and dirt, and then used as a brick. It can also be left empty and used as a building element for a light-weight structure such as an indoor pavilion.
The concept of United Bottle is intended to solve both the garbage problem and the housing need for areas destroyed by hurricane or tsunami. The bottles can be used to build stable walls for temporary and long term shelter – these structures can be covered by tents or other membrane structures. The pieces lock into each other which gives additional stability and resistance to torsion. In 2007 the first prototype of the United Bottle was 3D printed by stereolithography.
United_Bottle filled with waterUnited_Bottle filled with dirtUnited_Bottle filled with sandConcept scheme of the bottle houseapplication of United_BottleUnited_Bottle pavilion in FrankfurtUnited_Bottle pavilion and the creatorsUnited_Bottle pavilion interiorBar in Venice built from United_Bottle units
Jasmine Zimmerman created an open-roofed spherical house which measures 12 x 12 x 6 feet (3.6 x 3.6 x 1.8 meter) created out of thousands of PET bottles. With this structure she wanted to point out the fact that Americans waste over 30 billion of PET bottles a year, only 10% of which are recycled.
The structure is created by glueing PET bottles together with hot glue pistol (which by the way renders the bottles unrecyclable in any normal fashion). As an object for raising awareness it can be considered successful however, because she made two installations at festivals (Bumbershoot and City Sol Festival in New York) where people themselves actually added their disposable PET bottles to the structure. In that way the structure grew in an almost organic fashion and people were more directly confronted with the waste issue.
The Trash temple is constructed out of a number of blocks which are actually pressed bales of millions of PET bottles. The temple was designed by Salzig Design. The structure won second prize at the International Ideas Competition at Folly Dock 2007.
The temple was seven meters high, 10 meters wide, and has a circumference of about 25 meters. Visitors could climb up to the top and also enter the structure on ground level. The idea was that in this place where they could perceive the smell of the garbage they would understand the uselessness of overproduction. The structure was surrounded by thousands of sunflowers that marked the footpaths and added symmetry to the place of contemplation.
