A great need exists for dwellings: more than 100 million people worldwide are homeless at present, and more than a billion live in in-adequate accommodation. What is more, these figures are increasing rapidly. Climatic changes, environmental catastrophes, war and not least an enormous rise in population in the less developed regions of the world are well-known reasons for this.
In an article in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the prestigious Potsdam Institute for Climatically Based Research, recently challenged architects not to concentrate on “the erection of high-tech tower blocks, but to address a concept of economic housing that is as climatically neutral as possible and that can be built by the residents themselves as far as possible”. As a sustainable construction material, he recommends the use of waste matter.
Building with refuse – a material that is both reasonable in price and sustainable – is a topic with which Markus Heinsdorff has long been concerned. The experience he has gained from his previous lightweight structures – including mobile pavilions for China and India and the much admired German-Chinese House at the Expo 2010 in Shanghai (see DETAIL 10/2010 and 1,2/2013) – as well as his many stays in poorer regions have helped him develop technically innovative and low-cost structures. In particular, these were for the numerous slums in South Africa. The Ocean Dome, inaugurated last April, may be seen as a kind of prototype for this. There is no lack of plastic rubbish on the nearby beaches of Cape Town.
For his installation, therefore, Heinsdorff took some 5,000 bottles, fishing nets, 1,000 metres of fishing line and other plastic waste and set them in layers in 50 filigree wire gabion baskets. As a load-bearing system, a relatively stable, bolted truss construction was designed, the specially assembled members of which are developed from folded and – for reasons of corrosion resistance – galvanized sheet steel. Not the least fascinating aspect is the aesthetic effect, which the unremarkable waste matter lends. Above all, as a result of the translucent properties of the material, the view from the inside against the light reveals effects and a play of colours reminiscent of church windows.
This apparent contrast between cheap refuse and visual quality is important to the artist. On the one hand, he wishes to draw attention to the littering of the world’s oceans, at the same time lending his dwellings value through their special design and thus avoiding the aura of poverty usually associated with slum buildings. Despite this possible shortcoming, Heinsdorff sees little works of art in many of the simple dwellings found in the slums of the world. Their builders handle the modest, often recycled materials derived from the surroundings very creatively. What they lack, though, is an effective insulation against heat or cold. In the constructional use of gabions, building waste from structures destroyed by natural catastrophes could also be used instead of burning or burying it, as mostly happens today to create a supposed sense of order.
The artist also sees the possibility of rendering the walls with loam. In general, though, the houses should remain flexible. In gabion construction, the filling material can be varied at any time, and the waste matter, depending on the means of the residents, can subsequently be changed for traditional building materials such as loam, sand or stones from the surroundings, without having to replace the basic structure or the roof.
That also applies to the prototypes that are at present being created in the architectural park in Boisbuchet, France. The basic framework of this 20 m² house weighs just 130 kg and is braced with thin steel wiring like the structure of a Zeppelin. In areas subject to flooding, this housing type can also be assembled on volumes that float up if required. They could be constructed with recycled PET bottles in gabions beneath a boarded framework that serves at the same time as a foundation.
Above all, the aim is to minimize the construction period. The basic structure, delivered as a kind of unit-assembly system, should be capable of erection by two people in two days. A further two days are foreseen for filling the walls and building the roof. This structure could also serve as the basic framework for the next project, on which the Munich artist is already working: refugee camps throughout the world made from the packing material that occurs daily from the tonnes of relief supplies. Recycling can scarcely be more direct.
