The green market continues to explode for both health and sustainable reasons. That combination of goals brings lots of creative recycling options. For example, walls, counter tops, floors, furniture, and even houses can be made with recycled glass.
Personally, I am fascinated with recycled glass utilized in building construction. I observed a variety of creators during the past decade, and continue to do so. However, most of my researched finds are historical. Bless the Roadside Architect site that illustrates global glass building passions that started long ago. (Please view all the pages to Roadside’s informative site).
Getting up to date, the most popular reference to recycling glass for building is from Earthship Biotecture. The site and data is thoroughly inspiring, but it’s a much bigger picture than my focused personal mission to build an exterior recycled glass wall.
Persistence pays, as I finally landed on the site of artist Jackie Stack Lagakos, titled Bottled Structures. She was originally inspired from visiting a village in Simi Valley, California that was built in the 1950s with found bottles, sand and cement. Jackie’s journey continued and brought additional inspirers, mentors and friends to her life and interest.
From those varied roots, Jackie developed her own visions with bottles, smashed tile, mirror, stained glass, stone and mortar. As you can see from her images, Jackie’s masonry skills helped give birth to her unique bottle walls, benches, mosaic tile floors, birdbaths, plaques, murals and paths.
Jackie has been at this for awhile, more than a decade, and she expanded into mosaic art. Yet I only discovered her gifted bottled skills earlier this year. I was so thrilled, especially after numerous discussions with naysayers, that I contacted her for advice. Almost overnight she replied with Bottle Instructions 101.
What a gal! Now recycled glass building can be shared while marketing deserved artisans who refine the skill to suit custom requests. One-of-a-kind creations are the style of choice for this art form and isn’t it refreshing when good designs make environmental sense?
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Delia Montgomery www.ChicEco.com is my business. My name is Delia and I get my kicks by discovering people who design and make eco-green products utilizing trash and salvaged materials. From clothing to home and garden stuff, I think it's cool. My pursuit is to connect suppliers with retailers as a broker. Something crazy about me favors small businesses.
Constructed a yurt home on my tiny piece of Pahoa paradise early 2009. In a lava zone, but then everybody here is. I happen to dig the vibrations. Indeed a challenge to build sustainable style. See blog on http://chiceco-yurtliving.blogspot.com. Damn building inspectors. Yet I'm determined to walk the green talk, and to artistically recycle especially where islands have trash problems.
Paradise suits me well to benefit my mind, body and spirit. Growing own food from banana, mango and avocado trees. Vegies galore, but still under construction on this fifth-acre semi-urban lot. Hope to fulfill my beer-bottle wall dream and maintain a pet someday.
