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(#11) The Budweiser House
Built by Dan Phillips of The Phoenix Commotion, the Budweiser House is an affordable, eco-friendly home made mostly of reclaimed materials. Its design was inspired by, you guessed it, Budweiser beer. The colors red, white, blue, and silver feature prominently on the exterior, and inside you'll find a kitchen floor paved with Budweiser signage as well as a bathtub with a Budweiser tap for a faucet.
It's just one of many such projects by Phillips, who established The Phoenix Commotion in Huntsville, TX, as a way to counter the commodification of housing and the waste that always results from this. All of his homes clock in at about 70-80% recycled, reclaimed, or salvaged material that otherwise would have ended up in the trash or a landfill.
"The problem of waste is worldwide," said Phillips in a super-funny and engaging June 2010 TED talk. "We're in trouble."
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(#3) Don Justo's Cathedral
Justo Gallego Martinez's cathedral is outrageously amazing to behold. Don Justo, as he is known, is an ex-Trappist monk and farmer and, since 1963, he's been slowly but steadily building a cathedral near Madrid that's modeled on St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. The whole thing is made of discarded materials, and reaches a good 40 meters into the sky.
Don Justo started his project with zero construction experience, and he's still going strong in 2016. If you've got 20 minutes, Future Shorts has a great YouTube bit called The Madman and the Cathedral that delves into Don Justo's background and his longtime labor of faith.
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(#7) Save the Beach Hotel
Corona's Save the Beach Hotel was a bold statement piece intended to draw attention to the gross volume of trash that gets tossed on European beaches every year. And that trash is exactly what the hotel was made of – beer cans, toys, mannequin legs, even a garden gnome for good measure. Yep, this right here was the world's first garbage hotel, courtesy of the creative brains at J. Walter Thompson Madrid.
HA Schult, the German artist famous for working with trash (see his Trash People for reference), was the mastermind behind the project's execution. Although the hotel wasn't really open to the public, people did stay in it – Danish supermodel Helena Christensen, for instance. It was more an art piece/public awareness campaign than a permanent structure, but still plenty awesome.
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(#4) The Brighton Waste House
The Brighton Waste House is a research project you could live inside if it wasn't for all those pesky graduate students and workshopgoers. Built with waste materials salvaged from construction projects, this low-energy structure was completed in April 2014, and it's living proof that waste material can go a long way.
It's also proof that young people can play a big role in building innovative, contemporary housing – students at City College Brighton and Hove in England helped make this thing happen. Just a few of the items that went into its construction include vinyl banners, razors, jeans, chalk waste, and 20,000 toothbrushes.
For inspiration, the Brighton Waste House looked to The House That Kevin Built, a sustainable home that went up in London in 2008 over six days – on live TV.
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(#5) Victor Moore's Junk Castle
Artist Victor Moore built a tiny castle of scrap in 1970 as part of his MFA thesis, and he did it for the ridiculously low price of $500. According to Atlas Obscura, the castle features reclaimed sheet metal, salvaged remains of cars and appliances, and windows made of old washing machine doors. This special Whitman County, WA, structure was later sold by Moore and his wife, but with a decent tiny army you could probably lay siege and take it for yourself.
One of Moore's former students, artist and photographer David Patterson, published a blog post about the building, accompanied by high-quality pictures, one of which is shown here.
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(#8) Temple of a Million Bottles
This intriguing Thai creation, called Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew ("temple of a million bottles") consists mostly of discarded Heineken and Chang beer bottles. The catalyst for its construction was litter; or, more accurately, Buddhist monks in the Khun Han district getting sick of tripping over litter. In 1984, those monks came up with a brilliant two-step plan to clean up all the trash. Step 1: Collect all of the beer bottles. Step 2: Build a temple out of them.
The temple was such a wild success the monks added more structures, including a crematorium, sleeping quarters, and water towers. And toilets, which you're welcome to use if you ever decide to visit.
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About This Tool
You would not believe that these strange buildings were made from recycled materials and other things were thrown into the trash can. Under the influence of global diversification and sustainable development, garbage recycling and renewable materials have received more extensive attention and use. With overpopulation and consumption growth, we need to find more environmentally friendly ways to develop. Using recycled materials for construction can be a good way to save money and protect the environment.
In some cases, compared with new materials, recycled materials can make architectures stronger, more efficient, and less expensive. You will find a collection of 11 crazy buildings made from trash and recycled materials here, the random tool would simply introduce them.
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