Vinyl banners and banners advertising concerts, festivals and exhibitions are no longer needed immediately after these events are over. Toothbrushes intended for business and first class passengers departing from Gatwick are thrown away after one use. Computer floppy disks and videotapes are of no use to anyone in 2014. All these and many other things that were meant to be sent to landfill have found new life in the Waste House building. This is the first major construction made of "garbage": similar structures have already been erected earlier, but only of a temporary nature, and for this construction all the necessary permits were obtained in accordance with very strict British legislation.
The initiator of the project is the architect and researcher Duncan Baker-Brown, director of the BBM bureau and professor at the University of Brighton. He developed the project with his students, and with the implementation they were helped by volunteers - interns from the management company Mears Group and students from the City College of Brighton and Hove: a total of 253 people were employed in the project. For Baker-Brown, this is not the first experimental building made of "rubbish": in his opinion, "there are no unnecessary things, there are only things out of place."
The building's foundations, made of granulated blast furnace slag, a by-product of the ironmaking industry, are supported by a timber frame made of beams and plywood sheets "rescued" from a demolished house next door. This coniferous sawn timber frame is filled with 4,000 plastic DVD boxes, 2,000 floppy disks, videotapes, 20,000 toothbrushes, broken bricks, and 2 tons of denim pants and sleeves from rags. From the inside, the walls are sheathed with sheets of drywall that have turned out to be damaged at the dump with a finishing layer of new plaster; in order to see the filling of the frame, small viewing windows were left in the skin. This filling also plays the role of thermal insulation, and after a while it will be possible to judge its effectiveness: sensors are built into the walls that collect information about the processes taking place in the building.
The most stressed parts of the walls are constructed from clay and local limestone using compressors and pneumatic rammers. This "earth-ground" structure increases the overall energy efficiency of the building: a 35 cm thick wall takes almost 12 hours to fully warm up.
Old vinyl posters are used throughout the house as a vapor barrier, and the 65 m2 rubber underlay is made from old Pirelli tires.
The windows in the building are new, with energy-efficient triple glazing, but the tightness of their abutment to the walls is ensured by an interlayer of bicycle chambers. New solar panels are installed on the southern slope of the roof.
2000 pieces of old moisture resistant carpet tiles cover the facades and are used as flooring on the first floor. The material of the steps and risers of the inner staircase is compressed recycled paper. The kitchen work surface is made from recycled plastic coffee cups and broken coffee grinders.
The building is located on the campus of the University of Brighton and serves as part of the “sustainable” architectural design curriculum. This is a kind of open laboratory for "green" construction, where exhibitions, lectures and workshops are held.
Buildings in the UK account for 45% of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere, so the Brighton Waste House is especially relevant: this garbage house, coupled with the latest construction methods that reduce construction time and material consumption, has a minimal impact on the environment. As this project clearly demonstrates, there are no unnecessary things, and even old jeans can find a place for themselves in the design of a new home.
