Building with Plastic. A New Possible Solution for the Environment

Authors

  • Daniela Besana University of Pavia
  • Claudia Ferrari

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.19229/2464-9309/582019

Keywords:

plastic, recycle, PET bottles, circular economy, waste management

Abstract

The research concerns a possible way for recycling plastic bottles as construction material, as an additional reuse circuit. Following a preliminary critical analysis of case studies to highlight the possible design variables, an innovative method which uses plastic bottles for the construction of load-bearing walls is proposed. Models of different constructive solutions have been designed and built, up to the proposal of a module of four bottles, filled with sand and tied together. Laboratory compression tests have shown the strength of the basic module and a f.e.m. analysis has demonstrated the stability of the structure. These first results encourage to other more accurate analysis and testify its potential versatility as building material and exportability of use even in different contexts, at a social, economic and environmental level.

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Author Biographies

Daniela Besana, University of Pavia

Engineer-Architect and PhD, she is Associate Professor of Technical Architecture at the DICAr. She carries out research on the recovery and re-use of cultural heritage, with reference to construction technologies and design strategies for intervention on the existing.
E-mail: daniela.besana@unipv.it

Claudia Ferrari

Engineer-Architect, she works as a freelancer mainly performing f.e.m. and structural calculations d.b.a. and a code for engineering studies.
E-mail: clo88@hotmail.it

References

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Proposed construction method: Arrangement of the bottles, creation and binding of the brick. agathón

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Published

30-06-2019

How to Cite

Besana, D. and Ferrari, C. (2019) “Building with Plastic. A New Possible Solution for the Environment”, AGATHÓN | International Journal of Architecture, Art and Design, 5(online), pp. 73–82. doi: 10.19229/2464-9309/582019.

Issue

Section

Architecture | Research & Experimentation

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