What is most impressive about the curated collection of material reuse architecture that Bahamon and Sanjines found is the creativity. Peach pits are used as flooring, tire treads are used as roofing material, and plastic water tanks are used as light fixtures. The designers of these projects worked closely with the materials and created beautiful, organic buildings that certainly don’t look trashy, even if they are made from waste.
Now, this isn’t your typical architecture look-book with huge glossy photos — this is more of an idea book, full of diagrams, construction photos, and info on reclaiming processes, along with great photos of the final product. You’ll recognize a couple of the more famous material reuse projects like the Big Dig House or the Heineken Bottle that can be used as a building material, but for the most part the projects are relatively unknown and totally beautiful. We had a chance to speak with Alejandro Bahamon about his new book to get a little more insight into material reuse in architecture.
Alejandro: We originally started researching recycling in architecture, and we realized that the reuse of structures goes back a very long time; roman structures converted into churches and then converted into libraries and so on. So we wanted to look for a new perspective in this field and that is how we came across some projects that reused materials for their construction. We decided to narrow down our research and focus on this topic.
Alejandro: Probably the most important challenge when recycling is to keep in mind that reusing the materials should not waste more energy (water for washing, transportation, heating, etc.) than using a new material. Another challenge would be to know as much as possible the properties of the materials in order to improve their functionality in their new use; this is a concept that some architects and designers call “super-use”.
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