Guess what gross trash item these
pendant lights are made of?
Our professor's passion in life is collecting trash. He collects everything from reclaimed steel to used water bottles that his favorite musicians drank out of at concerts. Perhaps the most impressive item in his collection is President Bill Clinton's half-eaten ice cream cone, which is entombed dishonorably in his neighbor's freezer.
Likewise, first year architecture students at my school spend a lot of time digging around in trash in the name of sustainability.
This rotation's assignment is to beautify the university's recycling complex (known as The Bar Pit) using only concrete and trash. Collectively, first year studio is designing an area referrred to as "The Terrace." Our client is Al, the director of the complex, who has worked for over 10 years to make our university more sustainable. Since 1999, the amount of trash that is recycled out of the university waste stream has jumped from about 19% to 59%. Al and his recycling guys are so dedicated to their work that it's hard to escape catching a case of their enthusiasm.
What were we so excited about?
Trash from the homecoming floats!!
My section was assigned to design and then build a table for 40 people, which will be used as a break place for the employees of the recycling complex, as well as a space for meetings and presentations. Our professor James insisted that we make the table out of concrete, then use only trash as the aggregate. He later narrowed aggregate options down to glass, and declared that the table would be a glass table. But that we still had to make it out of concrete. James has a way with words.
At any rate, I was actually very excited about the prospect of upcycling glass. I rather like fire, and the idea of getting to use it to melt stuff without getting in trouble is appealing. So I set off to do some research.
Contemporary Bath Design.
At one point, this lamp was a bottle. Kyle Cunniff.
"Lamp drop" lights. Rafael Morgan. (By the way - this guy makes some fascinating stuff. Look him up.)
Serving dishes made of recycled bottles
Possibly the coolest table ever. Asmptote.
Old vodka bottles transformed into lights.
I am in love with this light fixture by Yoon Bahk, made of recycled wine bottles.
Ok, so maybe I strayed away from melting glass a little bit...
Scandalous glass dresses made of bottle slices. Kathleen Plate.
Absolut tumblers!
"Recycling" has become a tired term recently. I'm completely smitten with the idea of taking things and turning them into something prettier and more useful - upcycling. It's so saddening to see beautiful bottles thrown into a recycling bin only to be smashed up and made into boring window panes or the same bottle... I always want to clean them up, scrape the label off and turn them into pieces of art. (That's why I was so pleased to see the wine bottle pendant light and the Absolut tumblers!)
Anyway - to relate this entry back to architecture, our professor introduced us to a company called Vetrazzo that makes countertops out of concrete and recycled bottles.
This one was made out of Skyy bottles
....Impossible, you say?
There you have it: translucent concrete.
In this case, the concrete is translucent thanks to small optical fibers that pass through the slab. I think that we could accomplish the same look by melting down thin slabs of glass from the recycled bottles we have, then sliding the slabs into the concrete as it's setting. Another option would be to cast whole bottles in the concrete:
Here's a method of recycled "windows" borrowed from earthships (Perhaps I'll have more on these later... They intrigue me).
Doing something similar to this would allow a lot more light through our table, but I suppose we will have to experiment to see how structurally sound a giant concrete table can be with bottles stuck through it.
