Like a crystal castle for a post-ecopalyptic world, Casa Ecologica de Botellas Plasticas (or La Casa de Botellas) is a dream home that only an extremely creative, environment-friendly mind could conjure up. Constructed from thousands of PET plastic bottles, possibly headed for improper disposal, the home created by the Alfredo Santa Cruz family in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina, is “a tool for promoting ecological and social responsibility.” The Santa Cruz’s, “successfully designed their portable structures to be accessible, simple, and creative down to the last detail.” As if the ‘big bottle house’ wasn’t whimsical enough, Alfredo also designed a smaller playhouse out of bottles for his young daughter. See exactly how many plastic bottles it took to build La Casa de Botellas after the jump!
The walls, columns, beds, couches, coffee tables, and even an outdoor garden palapa are all made from discarded drink bottles, yet the structure is strong enough to support a Tetra pack roof and CD jewel case doors and windows. And though no member of the family is a professionally trained architect or designer, they developed “a self-invented casting technology [that] keeps the bottles fused together without obstructing the visual symmetry.” La Casa de Botellas is a great example of what families can do with minimal resources and a whole lot of ingenuity.
Here is a list of what Alfredo used to construct La Casa de Botellas:
1200 PET plastic bottles in its walls
1300 milk and wine Tetra Pack containers in its roof
140 compact disk boxes in its doors and windows
120 PET plastic bottles in the couches
200 PET plastic bottles in the bed
To ask questions about the project, feel free to contact Alfredo at lacasaecologicadebotellas@hotmail.com. To offer support to the Cruz family, who provide free home building courses to people in Latin American countries, you may make a donation through their PayPal account.
via Planet Magazine
This is fabulous and should be used in areas of the US where the climate and temeperature is feasible. THis type of housing can provide adquate facilities for the poor in those areas and at the same time save our environment
How were these plastic bottles wired or attached to create the walls? Note the plastic bottle foundation and steps. Were these cemented together? I’d like to try this here in Guatemala. Looks perfect!
I would also like to know how these were fused together and how the Tetra Pack containers were used to make the roof.