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.
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
The project of PETree was started by PET-MAT (Nováková – Prokop) and Experimental studio Achten-Nováková at Fa CTU Prague with support of KMV a.s. It is a pilot project of an experimental construction made by selfbearing PET-bottle structure in form of a 5 meters tall christmas tree. The structure is hollow and works as an exhibition room in order to mediate information on the facts about reusable waste, focused on plastic garbage, represented by PET bottles. The tree has the aim to show the value of plastic PET garbage and its unbelievable quantity, which depends on consumers: all of us. The tree consists of 12 thousand 1,5l PET bottles, connected by wireframe and ropes. One Primary school and twelve highschools from Prague, Mladá Boleslav, Kolín, Slaný and Sedlčany took part on collection and they were also building a construction panel with decoration. The tree is enlightened at night with interesting lightshow delivered by IIM CVUT Prague. The PETree exhibition is open daily from 9 AM to 10 PM.
