The Bottle-Up foundation in Zanzibar, started by Hubert and Elisabeth van Doorne and the Dutch Design Foundation, is an initiative that focuses on the upcycling of used glass bottles found around the island with the help of local craftsmen. A popular tourist location, Zanzibar welcomes thousands of visitors onto its shores every year, resulting in a high volume of waste output on the archipelago's 650-square-mile mainland. Bottle-Up's mission is to take this waste and turn it into a product for locals to buy, sell, and eventually build with.
Bottle|Brick and Trending Terazzo are the initiative's newest product additions. Bottle|Brick, a building block still in its early prototype stages, is made of cement, crushed glass, and large glass fragments. The crushed glass and large glass fragments are intended to replace sand and gravel, which are expensive to import to the island and thus lower the production cost and utilize existing resources to create a product that could be used in building construction. Recently debuted at Dutch Design Week 2016, Trending Terazzo is a decorative white cement and glass material that can be shaped into various objects using nontraditional molds (such as a metal wok) found on the island, and polished for a smooth effect.
Previously, the organization has produced smaller objects such as spice jars, pendant and tabletop light fixtures, as well as candle holders. Now, its is branching out to larger projects after learning that local hotels import furniture from abroad. Bottle-Up now offers a collection of furniture and fixtures that comprises Flower|Block (a vase), Lazy|Afternoon (a bench), Mabati|Mesa (a round table), and Sandy|Sphere (a decorative tray). Ultimately, it hopes to provide hotels with furnishing options made from resources on the island.
Watch the process of making Trending Terazzo from start to finish:
This article is part of a weekly series spotlighting the latest in innovative products and materials. Read more of ARCHITECT's Object of the Moment coverage here.
