The Waste House, designed by architect and University of Brighton academic Duncan Baker-Brown, is made almost entirely from thrown away materials most of which were heading for landfill sites or incineration. Materials used in its construction already include 20,000 toothbrushes, two tonnes of denim jeans, 4,000 DVD cases, 4,000 floppy discs, 2,000 used carpet tiles, and tonnes of construction waste.
These are now being joined by old duvets from the university’s halls of residence that are being used as insulation and discarded oyster shells from English’s Oyster Bar in central Brighton that have been ground down, mixed with waste aggregates from the local Preston Barracks development site, and turned into wall tiles.
Speaking about the latest modifications to the Waste House, Duncan Baker-Brown said: “It is great to see the Waste House continuing to break new ground four years after it was first completed. Duvets and oyster shells are not currently widely recycled yet, like so many of the other materials we have used, are perfectly suited to alternative uses. We will now be testing how they perform so that we can demonstrate to others the huge potential.”