Nepal's biggest 'Bottle House' at Pharping

Riju Shrestha
Lalitpur

Can you ever imagine of a house made of bottles? Not indeed but only in imagination, right? To many of you, this may come as an unrealistic package but today, creativity has dragged evolution beyond the imagination. 'Bottle House' in the rural Pharping is a living edifice that has ingeniously employed thousands of waste bottles that are of no use.

This eco-friendly house construction project was conceptualized by an American professor and an eco-architect Bill Hutchins, who has also worked in a waste management sector. Before construction of Nepal’s biggest bottle house at Sheshnarayan VDC, he had developed a concept and demonstration of ‘a poor man house’ at Khahare in Chalnakhel VDC of Pharping.

“Demonstration of this poor man house concept, when proved to be inexpensive to the poor people, inspired for the replication of Nepal’s biggest eco-friendly bottle house at Sheshnarayan’’ said Sandesh Subedi, who was involved in the project since its inception.

The idea of the project was put into action with a mutual aid of A School for Community (ASC) and Shikharapur Community Learning Centre (SCLC) and also with an equal technical co-operation and assistance of Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation in Chalnakhel.

The construction process took nearly six months. It involved used and thrown 9000 empty glass bottles collected from various dumping sites. They are stacked one on top of the other, each attached to the mixture of sand, straw and waste hairs of human and animals. The bottles are placed in such a way so that the opening of the bottles forms the outer side of the walls. “According to a research conducted by the team, a restaurant dumps 100-150 bottles per week from places like Pharping, Lalitpur, Nuwakot and Balaju”, said Subedi.






‘’This alternative brick house perfectly suits the varying climate and temperatures inside and outside, providing earthquake resistant walls. The most overwhelming aspect about the house is that it twinkles at night when the lights are put on inside and the only fear is the probable damages caused to the bottles’’, shared Subedi.

Currently, this eco-friendly house has been transformed into an agriculture teaching school named as “Shikharapur Sustainable Farmers School” and is successfully imparting pragmatic knowledge on organic farming and agriculture to the local inhabitants.

RADIO