TAGBILARAN CITY, July 13 (PIA)--In the attempts to make good use of discarded polyethylene terepthalate (PET) and glass rum bottles, an Estonian architect used about 7,100 of them to build a community center that would be a play hall for kids and meeting venue for the adults of Talisay in Anda, Bohol.
The main idea behind the design is to take the local, traditional building culture as an inspiration and give it a fresh and playful twist through contemporary architectural design, shared Estonian Hanna Lakk who volunteered to create the 15 by 17.5 meter AndaKidz Community Center.
The materials that are usually seen as the building materials of the poor are presented in a way that will emphasize the potential and raise their status, Laak who meant bamboo, coconut lumber and nipa fronds.
The form of the building is borrowed from the traditional nipa hut, the large roof covering the building is built from bamboo poles and covered in thatched nipa, using the traditional sloping gradient that assures good drainage to keep the roof last longer.
The building, under the roof from where all the functions is located is made out of concrete framework filled with eco bricks.
By eco-bricks, architect designer means a pet bottle filled with river sand. These are piled and set by a good mortar filling, to which experts claim is several times stronger than concrete hollow blocks.
By using PET bottles over brick, they solve costs problems, and PET plastic bottles are non brittle thus absorbs shcok loads without failure, Bio climatic, re-usable, thus green construction as the bottles can survive for hundreds of years, he explained.
Estonian non profit organization, ANDAKIDZ built the community centre between August 2014 and January 2015 for the belief that Anda needs an indoor play and learning centre that can be used by children of all ages when they are not in school; a place to make crafts, paint and draw, read books, play games, enjoy musical instruments, watch educational programs, practice singing/dancing, hold events, said Robin Gurney, among the prime movers of the organization in Anda.
When the kids are not using it the adults can take advantage of the space for various community projects and meetings.
We used plastic bottles filled with sand as "bricks", old tyres for furniture, bottle caps for decoration - wherever possible we reused and recycled waste materials from the area and combined them with local resources such as nipa leaves, coconut wood and bamboo, he said.
For fillings, he said they got the sand from various locations along Linawan and Badiang rivers which, in some locations, there is a problem of flooding at high tide.
By removing the sand we help reduce the flooding issue and get free resource for the building. Win win, he shared, triumphantly.
With pet bottle walls, the construction took 5632 Coke, Sprite and Fanta pet bottles and 2100 clear Tanduay and Emperador rhum bottles, Gurney said.
The result is a building with thick bottle walls, clear glass bottles as windows and an interspacing of bamboo holes for ventilation, the interior so wide but contrasting with the light materials in the roof, affording perfect ventilation.
The building, which has withstood Ruby and Senyang storms, is also eyed now as a community evacuation center, said Virgilio Mainit, whose family donated the lot for the building. (rac/PIA-7/Bohol)
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