La Casa Ecológica de Botellas by Rodrigo Soldon licensed under the terms of CC BY-ND 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the House of Bottles in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina.
After the Argentinian economy went bust in 2001, Alfredo Santa Cruz was reduced to sifting through trash.
But in an inspiring tale of lemons into lemonade, he decided to make that trash into a home. More specifically, using a system of over 1,200 interlocking, sand- and water-filled plastic soda bottles. The roof is also “shingled” with over 1,300 cardboard TetraPak cartons.
It’s not just the structure of the house itself that was made from plastic debris: the furniture inside, including chairs and a bed are also made from bottles, and the home even has shutter windows made from CD cases. He made a playhouse for his daughter, too.
Since then, Cruz has spent his time teaching thousands of tourists and visitors how to make recycled homes of their own. Not the most conventional of occupations, but certainly one of the more interesting.
