BOTTLE HOUSES: SOMETHING TO DRINK TO

TREE HUGGER - Tito Ingenieri, a character from a city called Quilmes, about an hour south from Buenos Aires, has built a massive home made entirely from beer bottles and trash. And by massive, we mean...

By massive we mean 6 million bottles, which have been added to the home along 19 years (at least that's what he claims)...

Ingenieri says that his house is also an alarm to know when the river is rising: the southern winds make the bottles' necks whistle.

Apart from the bottles, the home has some sculptures from trash

PLANET GREEN - A Peace Corps volunteer's project in Guatemala salvaged trash from several villages to construct an entirely new schoolhouse.

TREE HUGGER - At Puerto Iguazu, near the frontier between Argentina and Brazil, lies this amazing house made entirely with recycled materials. Made by a local family, its walls have over 1200 PET bottles and its ceiling, more than 1300 Tetra Pak cartons.

TREE HUGGER - Designer Covers Mountain House with Recycled Tin Cans in Patagonia

MORE BOTTLE HOUSE LINKS

WIKIPEDIA -  The use of empty vessels in construction dates back at least to ancient Rome, where many structures used empty amphorae embedded in concrete. This was not done for aesthetic reasons, but to lighten the load of upper levels of structures, and also to reduce concrete usage...

It is believed that the first bottle house was constructed in 1902 by William F. Peck in Tonopah, Nevada. The house was built using 10,000 bottles of beer from Jhostetter's Stomach Bitters which were 90% alcohol and 10% opium. The Peck house was demolished in the early 1980s.

Around 1905, Tom Kelly built his house in Rhyolite, Nevada, using 51,000 beer bottles masoned with adobe. Kelly chose bottles because trees were scarce in the desert. Most of the bottles were Busch beer bottles collected from the 50 bars in this Gold Rush town. Rhyolite became a ghost town by 1920. In 1925, Paramount Pictures discovered the Bottle House and had it restored for use in a movie. It then became a museum, but tourism was slow, causing it to close. From 1936-1954, Lewis Murphy took care of the house and hosted tourists. From 1954-1969, Tommy Thompson occupied the house. He tried to make repairs to the house with concrete which, when mixed with the desert heat, caused many bottles to crack....