WeirdConstruction Materials Wood as a building material for parking garages is just starting to take off, but builders have experimented with different ways to get buildings up for generations. Here’s a look at five real materials you may not have considered—some for very good reason!
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GLASS BOTTLES. No, we didn’t make that up. A group of Buddhist monks built an actual temple out of 1 million beer bottles in Thailand. The building, which has a concrete core to make it functional, was designed to draw attention to waste and the potential of creating beauty from garbage. Just for good measure, all those bottle caps were used to create mosaics inside the structure. We’re not sure it’d work for parking, but we didn’t think about temples out of bottles, either. Source: listverse.com
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FUNGI. This is not your grandmother’s mushroom house. A group of researchers near London, England, says they’re working on a project that will grow buildings out of fungi. Their research lab is made of a group of 45 old shipping containers transformed into a research village where all sorts of interesting innovation is happening. That includes growing long strands of fungi they say make for an incredibly fireresistant and insulated building material. No word on the smell. Source: theguardian.com
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RICE. Again—not kidding. Those blocks that make up the Great Wall of China? Held together by mortar made from sticky rice. Yes, the same, slightly sweet rice we enjoy in Asian dishes. Scientists discovered the rice mortar nearly a decade ago and have since found it in many ancient Chinese buildings, where it was used both in the original construction and for repairs later on. Source: telegraph.co.uk
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ANIMAL BLOOD. Did you wince? Us too. But animal blood is a byproduct of food production, and there are some who say it can be used in building materials—similar to bricks. Blood has tons of protein, which makes it a very effective adhesive. Freeze-dried, it can be mixed with sand and water to form a paste that can be cast into bricks. The thought is this might be especially useful in very remote areas of the world that have few construction supplies but where people eat meat. Source: citymetric.com
SHUTTERSTOCK / TATYANA VYC; SOMCHAI SOM; RANGIZZZ; D. KUCHARSKI K. KUCHARSKA; TAINAR
6 PARKING & MOBILITY / OCTOBER 2019 / PARKING-MOBILITY.ORG
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TRASH. A townhouse in Rotterdam, Netherlands, looks like any other brick home, but looks can be deceiving. Its bricks were made from ground-up trash—15 tons of it. Dutch company StoneCycling ground up pieces of ceramics, glass, and clay to make the bricks that make up the four-story home. It may be the ultimate recycling. Source: cbsnews.com