DESIGN / BRIEF

This project was part of an international competition entry to consider uses for discarded beer bottles, which is a problem that occurs often around the Colonne di San Lorenzo district in Milan.

Our proposal was to collect and recycle bottles and broken glass for use as street furniture, freeway sound barriers and retaining walls. An advantage of using beer bottles as building blocks is that they are regularly shaped, readily available and can create interesting light effects within solid structures.

Broken pieces of glass could be inserted into a resin base to create decorative mosaic panels for uses such as freeway barriers, whereas intact bottles could be used as bricks to generate street furniture and retaining walls. Different coloured glass could also be arranged to create super-graphics for signage, which can be enhanced at night by incorporating LED lights.