since many people have shown interest in john habraken’s wobo beer bottle bricks and up-cyling in general, i thought i would bring up yet another example: my favorite architects’ (lot-ek) 1994 chromo-lamps, crafted from discarded detergent bottles found on the streets of new york. both the quasi-lamp (top) and omni-lamp (bottom) are painstakingly assembled by rinsing out old bottles, cutting a slit in them, wiring a bulb and attaching the necessary hardware to stand them up (ok i helped build a bunch of them). what i love about these is there warm orange glow, the steampunk luxury they lend to trash and the trashiness they lend to designer lamps. plus, they smell much nicer to work with than most trash. they’ve even open-sourced their designs with these handy diagrams:
although inspiring manufacturers to design products for upcycling is ideal, by putting a lot of labor – craft – into trash it becomes possible to vastly increase the value of an object. of course, it helps to be famous.