Prefabrication experiments - 168 - Building Kits - 09 - WOBO bottle

Brickwork is the oldest type of kit building. A sun-dried, compressed or fired chunk of earth modularly dimensioned or shaped is the basic formal unit used to put together any building type or size. The ability to stack, bond and vary a basic unit toward many shapes gives this simple construction method a permanence and value that continues to be employed around the world. Fixed by some type of mortar or glue, the irreversible nature of masonry relates this type of wet construction to massive archetypes and less to industrialized dry assembled systems. Industrialization normalized quality and consistency but simplicity endured.  Furthermore relating the basic mass produced unit’s scale to the human hand depicts both its universality and modesty.

Looking to leverage these basic ideas toward a universal low-cost and low-tech building method based on what was generally a throw away product, Alfred Heineken, assigned Dutch architect/theorist N. John Habraken to design a beer bottle that could double as a brick when emptied. The infamous, «World Bottle» WOBO, little green rectangular shaped Heineken beer bottle would be employed as a basic modular unit in an open building strategy. The glass pressed and blown bottles were designed in two sizes, 350 or 500 mm long, but were never actually mass-produced. The bottles were conceived with dimples and nipples on opposing sides during the manufacturing process. The bottlenecks and bottoms were shaped to fit together for horizontal brick coursing. World Bottle showcased how the eco-conscious building culture of the 1960s and 70s identified building materials from waste and stressed the potential for recycling. The objective was to provide communities all over the world with a truly minimal building unit that would require no complex training or skills.

Under the umbrella of ECObricks, using bottles, glass or plastic, as a DIY building material has resurfaced now and again as a type of log in a chord-based building strategy where bottles are filled and laid perpendicular to the wall face and bound together with some type of mortar. The unit to whole relationship between a brick a whole building offers timeless perception where construction is honest and relates to simple hand-produced and logical details.

WOBO bottle brick coursing