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A bottle wall is a wall made out of glass or plastic bottles [1] and binding material.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2011) |
A bottle wall is a wall made out of glass or plastic bottles [1] and binding material.
This is a building construction style which usually uses glass bottles (although mason jars, glass jugs, and other glass containers may be used also) as masonry units and binds them using adobe, sand, cement, stucco, clay, plaster, mortar or any other joint compound. This results in an intriguing stained-glass like wall. An alternative is to make the bottle wall from glass jugs filled with ink and set them up by supporting them between 2 windows. [2]
Although bottle walls can be constructed in many different ways, they are typically made on a foundation that is set into a trench in the earth to add stability to the wall. The trench is filled with a rubble of pea gravel and then filled in with cement. Rebar can be set into the foundation to add structural integrity. Bottle walls range one bottle to two bottles thick. Primitive mixture, such as cob or adobe can be used as mortar to bind the bottles. It is thickly spread on the previous layer of bottles followed by the next layer which is pressed into the mixture. Typically, two fingers of separation are used as a means of spacing although any kind of spacing can be achieved.
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.
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.
A typical mortar mix is 3:1 mason sand to a pozzolan (fly ash) cement mix. Other mixtures could be made from mortar and clay, adobe, cob, sand or cement. Bottle walls are extremely versatile and could be bonded with pretty much anything that can endure its given climate.
The use of empty vessels in construction dates back at least to ancient Rome, where many structures used empty amphorae embedded in concrete. This was not done for aesthetic reasons, but to lighten the load of upper levels of structures, and also to reduce concrete usage. This technique was used for example in the Circus of Maxentius.
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 Rhyolite, Nevada, using 51,000 beer bottles masoned with adobe. Kelly chose bottles because trees were scarce in the desert. Most of the bottles were Busch beer bottles collected from the 50 bars in this Gold Rush town. Rhyolite became a ghost town by 1920. In 1925, Paramount Pictures discovered the Bottle House and had it restored for use in a movie. It then became a museum, but tourism was slow, causing it to close. From 1936-1954, Lewis Murphy took care of the house and hosted tourists. From 1954-1969, Tommy Thompson occupied the house. He tried to make repairs to the house with concrete which, when mixed with the desert heat, caused many bottles to crack (Kelly had used adobe mud).
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 Kaleva Bottle House in Kaleva, Michigan, was built by John J. Makinen, Sr.(1871-1942) using over 60,000 bottles laid on their sides with the bottoms toward the exterior. The bottles were mostly from his company, The Northwestern Bottling Works. The house was completed in 1941, but he died before he could move in. The building was purchased by the Kaleva Historical Museum in 1981 and is listed on the National Register of Historical Places. Boston Hills Pet Memorial Park in Boston, Massachusetts, has a bottle wall from 1942. It is part of a small building used for storage. The Wimberley Bottle House in Wimberley, Texas, was constructed using over 9,000 soda bottles. It was built in the early 1960s as part of a pioneer town, a simulated Old West town set to be a tourist attraction/theme park. The house was modeled after Knott's Berry Farm bottlehouse in California.
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 [3] and they are both on the Heineken estate in Noordwijk, near Amsterdam. The first was a small shed which had a corrugated iron roof and timber supports where the builder could not work out how to resolve the junction between necks and bases running in the same direction. Later, a timber double garage was renovated with WOBO siding. Alfred Heineken did not develop the WOBO concept further and the idea never got a chance to materialize. Rinus van den Berg, a Dutch industrial & architectural designer, designed several buildings while working with John Habraken in the 1970s. One design was published in Domus, 1976. A third WOBO structure was made by Dutch architect Gerard Baar in the late 1980s. He used a small batch of WOBO's for the side walls of his garden shed.
The Bottle house of Ganja was built between 1966-67.
Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew is a temple in Thailand that was built by monks out of bottles.
Media related to Bottles as building material at Wikimedia Commons
Adobe is a building material made from earth and organic materials. Adobe is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of earthen construction, or various architectural styles like Pueblo Revival or Territorial Revival. Most adobe buildings are similar in appearance to cob and rammed earth buildings. Adobe is among the earliest building materials, and is used throughout the world.
Masonry is the craft of building a structure with brick, stone, or similar material, including mortar plastering which are often laid in, bound and pasted together by mortar. The term masonry can also refer to the building units themselves.
A wall is a structure and a surface that defines an area; carries a load; provides security, shelter, or soundproofing; or, is decorative. There are many kinds of walls, including:
Mud is soil, loam, silt or clay mixed with water. It is usually formed after rainfall or near water sources. Ancient mud deposits hardened over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone. When geological deposits of mud are formed in estuaries, the resultant layers are termed bay muds.
Building material is material used for construction. Many naturally occurring substances, such as clay, rocks, sand, wood, and even twigs and leaves, have been used to construct buildings. Apart from naturally occurring materials, many man-made products are in use, some more and some less synthetic. The manufacturing of building materials is an established industry in many countries and the use of these materials is typically segmented into specific specialty trades, such as carpentry, insulation, plumbing, and roofing work. They provide the make-up of habitats and structures including homes.
Cordwood construction is a term used for a natural building method in which short logs are piled crosswise to build a wall, using mortar or cob to permanently secure them. This technique can use local materials at minimal cost.
An Earthship is a style of architecture developed in the late 20th century to early 21st century by architect Michael Reynolds. Earthships are designed to behave as passive solar earth shelters made of both natural and upcycled materials such as earth-packed tires. Earthships may feature a variety of amenities and aesthetics, and are designed to withstand the extreme temperatures of a desert, managing to stay close to 70 °F (21 °C) regardless of outside weather conditions. Earthship communities were originally built in the desert of northern New Mexico, near the Rio Grande, and the style has spread to small pockets of communities around the globe, in some cases in spite of legal opposition to its construction and adoption.
Earthbag construction is an inexpensive building method using mostly local soil to create structures which are both strong and can be quickly built.
Glass brick, also known as glass block, is an architectural element made from glass. The appearance of glass blocks can vary in color, size, texture and form. Glass bricks provide visual obscuration while admitting light. The modern glass block was developed from pre-existing prism lighting principles in the early 1900s to provide natural light in manufacturing plants. Today glass blocks are used in walls, skylights, and sidewalk lights.
Natural building is the construction of buildings using systems and materials that emphasize sustainability. This in turn implies durability and the use of minimally processed, plentiful or renewable resources, as well as those that, while recycled or salvaged, produce healthy living environments and maintain indoor air quality. Natural building tends to rely on human labor, more than technology. As Michael G. Smith observes, it depends on "local ecology, geology and climate; on the character of the particular building site, and on the needs and personalities of the builders and users."
Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, also known as Bottle Village, is an art environment, located in Simi Valley, California. It was created by Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey (1896–1988) from the 1950s to the 1970s. Prisbey built a "village" of shrines, walkways, sculptures, and buildings from recycled items and discards from the local landfill.
A masonry oven, colloquially known as a brick oven or stone oven, is an oven consisting of a baking chamber made of fireproof brick, concrete, stone, clay, or cob. Though traditionally wood-fired, coal-fired ovens were common in the 19th century, and modern masonry ovens are often fired with natural gas or even electricity. Modern masonry ovens are closely associated with artisan bread and pizza, but in the past they were used for any cooking task involving baking. Masonry ovens are built by masons.
An earth structure is a building or other structure made largely from soil. Since soil is a widely available material, it has been used in construction since prehistoric times. It may be combined with other materials, compressed and/or baked to add strength.
Michael E. Reynolds is an American architect based in New Mexico, known for the design and construction of "earthship" passive solar houses. He is a proponent of "radically sustainable living". He has been a critic of the profession of architecture for its adherence to conventional theory and practice, and he advocates the reuse of unconventional building materials from waste streams, such as automobile tires, and is known for designs that test the limits of building codes.
PRE HISTORY Clay houses are found all across the whole world in every continent with tropical climates, very common with hunter and gatheres also permanent farming cultures. Ceramic houses are buildings made of an earth mixture which is high in clay, and fired to become ceramic. The process of building and firing such houses was developed as early as 15 000BC just before the dawn of farming. This way of construction souly includes huts with thathed roofing being extremely common.
A tin can wall is a wall constructed from tin cans, which are not a common building source. The cans can be laid in concrete, stacked vertically on top of each other, and crushed or cut and flattened to be used as shingles. They can also be used for furniture.
The history of construction traces the changes in building tools, methods, techniques and systems used in the field of construction. It explains the evolution of how humans created shelter and other structures that comprises the entire built environment. It covers several fields including structural engineering, civil engineering, city growth and population growth, which are relatives to branches of technology, science, history, and architecture. The fields allow both modern and ancient construction to be analyzed, as well as the structures, building materials, and tools used.
N. John Habraken was a Dutch architect, educator, and theorist. His theoretical contributions are in the field of user participation in mass housing, the integration of users and residents into the design process. The visual result of his theory is the architecture of lively variety. Habraken was the initiator of the international "Participation movement" in architecture. His book Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, first published in 1961, is the manifesto and starting point of this movement. The theme resident or user participation has been linked to Structuralism and open building.
An ecobrick is a plastic bottle densely packed with used plastic to create a reusable building block that achieves plastic sequestration. Ecobricks can be used to produce various items, including furniture, garden walls and other structures. Ecobricks are produced primarily as a means of managing consumed plastic by sequestering it and containing it safely, by terminally reducing the net surface area of the packed plastic to effectively secure the plastic from degrading into toxins and microplastics. Ecobricking is a both an individual and collaborative endeavour. The ecobricking movement promotes the personal ecobricking process as a means to raise awareness of the consequences of consumption and the dangers of plastic. It also promotes the collaborative process as a means to encourage communities to take collective responsibility for their used plastic and to use it to produce a useful product.
Earthship Brighton is a self-sustainable building, completed in 2006 and owned by the non-profit Low Carbon Trust, situated in Stanmer Park, Brighton, England.