Page 21 - REN July-Aug 2021

Message in a Bottle The Glass House, Boswell, British Columbia

For David H. Brown, a career in the funeral industry led to a
peculiar but fitting house design. Eager to find a practical
Jules Torti courtesy Realtor.ca
use for discarded embalming fluid bottles, he began
he reincarnation of items destined for recycling or landfill has become a clever and cost-efficient venture for building his square bottle house in a cloverleaf pattern
builders. As climate change awareness escalates, the consideration of environmentally responsible building with elaborate footbridges and terraces. He transformed
Tmaterials is paramount. Globally, bottle houses provide financially attainable solutions for housing shortages, his property on the east shore of Kootenay Lake into the
community greenhouses or pure whimsy. open pages of a fairy tale. Brown added a whole new
Discarded plastic bottles filled with sand are being repurposed as “bottle bricks” in India, South and Central America By TilJ [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http:// meaning to putting your heart and “soul” into a project.
www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons
and northern Nigeria. The bottles of compacted sand are 20 times stronger than brick, bullet-proof and a fraction of
the cost of a traditional build. In developing countries, inventive minds and patient hands have diverted countless Les Maisons de Bouteilles—The Bottle Houses, Cape Egmont, PEI
bottles from landfills with architectural pizazz. The concept isn’t new and here’s proof that the dreamers behind these The six-gabled house, tavern and chapel built by
structures refused to be bottled up:
Edouard Arsenault is a bottle village of “sunlight-
powered colours.” His first project, a 20 x 14-foot house
of 12,000 bottles inspired a hexagon tavern of 8,000
bottles to display his prized bottle collection inside.
The chapel followed in 1983, repurposing 10,000 more
glass bottles that’s best viewed at sunset when the
walls create an unmatched “symphony of light and
colour.” Cue up Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”!

Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew: The Temple of a
Million Bottles, Sisaket Province, Thailand

In northeast Thailand, 1.5 million empty Heineken
and Chang beer bottles were used in the construction
of the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew in Sisaket province.
The “Temple of a Million Bottles” is the staggering result of industrious Buddhist monks who began collecting the
bottles in 1984. The local government supported their efforts with even more bottle donations. Bottle caps were
incorporated into elaborate mosaics
In 1963, brewer Alfred Heineken and Dutch architect John Habraken created the Heineken WOBO, a brick that could and by 2009, the monks were on
hold beer. During a trip to the Caribbean, Heineken observed a lack of affordable building materials and beaches roll, building a crematorium, water
littered with bottles. He decided to marry his two observations in the WOBO design and produced 100,000 bottles tower, bathrooms, bungalows and
in two sizes that could interlock. He built a small shed on his estate in the Netherlands but his concept for the “world several prayer rooms to boot. Over 20
bottle” project didn’t advance further than his shed and a WOBO wall at the Heineken Museum in Amsterdam.
buildings were erected which means
Tom Kelly’s bottle house, Rhyolite, Nevada that age-old earworm will have to be
Tom Kelly’s epiphany was indeed found in the bottom updated from “99 bottles of beer on
of a beer bottle in Bullfrog Hills in 1905. In an area the wall” to 1.5 million. Take one down,
where the Joshua tree was the only viable lumber pass it ‘round…and build something!
supply, Kelly did the quick math. Rhyolite was a thriving Inspired? Check out Rob Roy’s book,
gold mining camp and there were 50 saloons in his Cordwood Building: A Comprehensive
radius. In less than six months he collected over 50,000 Guide to the State of the Art (New
bottles and built a three-room house with ornate
gingerbread trim and a veranda to boot. He completed Society Publishers). Roy explains how
his bottle house in 1906 and raffled it off at $5 a ticket. sustainable choices like glass bottle-
By 1920, the boomtown became a ghost town with end designs and cordwood masonry
only 20 residents remaining. The house has seen a few are the perfect excuse to open
incarnations since, from a movie set to a museum. another bottle. Cheers to that! g

By Mark Fischer – Million Bottle Temple, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45026666