Slashdot Mirror
Extreme Recycling - Cardboard Buildings
Xenographic writes: "Apparently, someone in the UK got the idea to build a school entirely out of cardboard and Westborough Primary School decided to implement it. The students are even recycling their trash to help construction!"
I remember them programs in school where you would bring in your pop bottles and they would make them into the benches that were on the playground...... i assume they're the same kinda programs.
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows - Bart Simpson
Both my elementary and high school had cardboard walls. It really sucked, unless you liked learning European History in Algebra class.
"Ask me about Loom"
Cardboard buildings: not for the homeless anymore!
... this may not be such a good idea - what happens when a plane hits it??
Using cardboard for structure in a building reminds me of the stuff packed in boxes last springtime during the flood. Water has an affinity to cardboard, soon to be followed by fungus (the fungus is among us,) cockroaches, rats, etc...
Cardboard is a great way to recycle and support lower life forms.
Forget a pizza
in its delivery box
cardboard school smell good
although this has become common in recent years
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How well would material such as cardboard scale, in a large structure?
I see it possibly as akin to hairs/threads, where one thread isn't strong, but many threads together are stronger than one solid length of the same material and the same diameter.
Could be wrong.
And look what happened to the pig who built his house out of sticks when the big bad wolf came by!
So I'm guessing they don't have to worry at all about fire drills. If there's a fire, they all die anyways. No, Mrs. Peterson, we don't have fire exits because we don't want to give the children a false sense of safety.
Anybody notice the date on the article is 1 April 2000?
There has to be a problem with lightning and the building. In no way do I claim to be an engineer of any type; but if lightning strikes any part of the building, even if it is treated cardboard, would the lighting cause some, if not a lot, of damage. Causing even more damage than on a building make of traditional materials? Traditional materials don't stand up well on their own. Without some sort of protection, the cardboard will be in a lot of trouble.
I'm curious to see what sort of solution the engineers have in tackling one of nature's most destructive forces: the thunderstorm.
You know who I think is crazy? All my ex-girlfriends!
Am I the only one suspicious of the date on the "Press Release"?
How bout we recycle linux into something usefull.
In order to prepare for the coming hunting season, I recycled the Windows2000 manuals, license, and CD that came with my laptop into clay pigeons at the sand pits this month with my rifle.
The cheesy book looked exploded into what looked like a thousand feathers of pages. The license required me to wad it up in a ball to throw it and was a difficult target, but it met its demise.
Only problem was shooting the CD. Kept missing the damn thing. When it did get hit, it would not shatter. Only a tiny hole. Emptied a dozen boxes of shells on the CD alone.
is "01 April 2000"! :)
/. recycle April Fool's day
:)
I wonder why does
jokes (?) as news?
Paul
An entire school made out of cardboard... can someone say 'fire hazard' ?
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Turning a hose on your school.
"Attention students, school is cancelled because the classroom has melted."
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
The press release is dated for April 1, 2000. The project is supposed to have been completed by March 2001.
Try browsing through the parent site.
Here is an article from the BBC about it dated March 21, 2001.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I wonder how something such as this would fair in Kansas weather. I doubt it could stand too severe of a straight line wind let alone a tornado. It would have to be a very dry climate to like Arizona. Even with all of the water resistant additives and materials it still couldn't be that water proof. Interesting though.
...are nothing to sniff at, though given the state of some of our schools one has to wonder about the posible motives. Anyway for more info on a broad range of building techniques and other alternative stuff take a look at these guys: Centre for Alternative Technology. They have some rather impressive buildings made from a range of materials. Including a Straw bale theater and a new visitor center made from rammed earth columns.
troodon.net
Check out this page for more interesting info on using cardboard for buildings, including an Expo pavillion!
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Although not recycleable like cardboard, I have seen buildings built out of styrofoam (Billy's Black & Gold Bar in Sharon, Pa for example). The structure is still traditional (wood, I-beams, etc.), but the outside is styrofoam blocks. Styrofoam is an excellent insulator, extremely cheap, and if it is ever damaged, a block can be replaced. I'm supprised this construction does not appear on more buildings.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
World Trade Center Tower II was made out of cardboard, World Trade Center Tower I was made out of recycled aluminum cans
Just wait for the rainy days for school to be out! ;)
Emptied a dozen boxes of shells on the CD alone.
Hmmm, rifle shells are a buck or so apiece... So, congratulations - you managed to spend nearly as much to shoot the CD as Windows2000 cost you.
Using a microwave oven would have been less expensive.
Cardboard walls? how is this different from the way public schools are build now?
It was always fun trying to study english right next to a rather loud acting class.
Great way to teach kids the about their place in the disposable economy - it (you) works, it (you) is cheap and it (you) can be torn down when your no longer needed. ta ta pig phuckers
Well if it collapsed they could all just crawl out and push it back upright, prop it up wit a 2x4 and go back to class.
(and now an attempt to avoid the lameness filter. yeah, yeah, i could figure out how to do it exactly but i'm too lazy to read the code)
Now that I think of it, I didn't use enough ammo. If I remember right, I bought those 100 boxes of 10 rounds of SKS ammunition for $100 total.
It may have cost me more to own W2K...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yippy skippy. Nothing new here with respect to the straw and rammed earth. Just slightly modernized techniques that have been around for thousands of years. Just take a trip to the N. American SouthWest and you can see adobe structures that are hundreds of years old. What is CAT's next great innovation? A sod house?
playground whispers of ...screen door on a submarine ... solar powered flashlight ... parachute that opens on impact ... all replaced by
"Did you hear the one about the brits who made a cardboard school ?"
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
But the microwave wouldn't have been as much fun. After all, that's what target shooting is all about.
This will only encourage the children to use their boogers as some sort of crude paste to keep the inner walls together!
Ever see in living color?
Eh? Perhaps you should pay attention to the date of that press release. Sheesh.
Michael C. Hollinger
How many people live in wooden houses?
Compressed cardboard is more dense than some types of wood. Also, it lacks a lot of the natural resins of say birch or pine. Pine tar is *very* flammable mind you.
Have you ever tried burning heavy gauge cardboard or say a phonebook? it doesnt work very well unless you shred it.
The parts of such a building vulnerable to flame are the honeycomb wafers used for insulation. Of course, most materials become somewhat flammable if you make them thin enough.
That was why asbestos seemed like such a good deal. Any ways the point is moot, shredded cardboard is *commonly* used as insulation these days. Its a whole lot easer to work with than fiberglass.
"I see you've been sent to the my office for the fourth time this month."
Jimmy continued silently staring at the cardboard floor, kicking impatiently at the corrogated ridges under his feet showing through after three months of moderate traffic.
"Jimmy?"
Jimmy looked up, feigning a look of innocence.
"You know matches, lighters and magnifying glasses were banned after we lost the North wing."
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
can be found at http://www.cardboardschool.co.uk/content/projim01. htm. This includes construction photos and some detail shots of the more interesting parts.
u gust_03.htm picture, showing the front of the completed building.
Of particular interest to the masses is this http://www.cardboardschool.co.uk/content/siteim/A
will all be fire retardant
Come on, it's not "fire retardant" it's "thermally challenged".
Not very PC if you ask me =P
If God gave us curiosity
you know the soundtrack for baldur's gate II? well i am playing the sequel. which really has nothing to do with anything. except: the soundtrack.
/. it might be this soundtrack that compelled me to actually take the notion of a press board school a matter worthy of comment.
the soundtrack plays constantly, really heady sweeping "end-of-the-world"symphonic stuff. plays when you are paused. it was playing when i took a break and decided to check out
there is nothing crazy or edgy about useing processed paper as a building material. i think it's a capitol idea.
In the 50's, France, under the pressure of the baby boom, build schools out of steel and... plaster and other supposed to be non inflammable, to be quickly available and cheap. The so called "Lycées Pailleron". As the building got older, some of the materials degraded and became toxic and inflammable. In 1971, one of the school caught fire. The fire spread so fast that the children had no chances excaping. There were ~100 dead. During the 80's it happened a second time, and some less dangerous accident later, the french goverment decided to destroy the old schools and to build the school in concrete.
Such schools might be cheap building, but in the long run they have heavy maintenance... And might also become dangerous if not permanently monitored.
Make your choice !
Here is an arial view of the school... if its any use http://www.schoolsnet.com/cgi-bin/inetcgi/schoolsn et/scripts/school.jsp?OID=150616&Region=SE&LEA=Sou thend-on-Sea#
Cruise TT
A similarly "alternative materials" idea is straw-bale construction. First heard about this in San Francisco/Berkeley areas; apparently it has some government support even. Here is a good page with some pictures, plans, history and thermal/etc. data even.
... cardboard cutter. Sorry, couldn't resist.
I can see it now: February 2013, a black van drives into WTC II's underground parking garage, and parks near a large support column. No, this is not a re-run of February 1993. The side door opens, and out come two dozen terrorists, all armed with ... cardboard cutters. But instead of putting those to somebody's throat, they'll take them to the large cardboard column, and start filing away until the whole structure collapses...
Yeah, that would have made the planes unnecessary. Just apply your cardboard cutters directly to the towers...
Can it withstand an earthquake? A flood? Or more importantly with the way that the British Empire has treated the Irish and other places around the world -- a terrorist attack?
So, this is what happens when all the public funds get shelled out for countrywide CCTV video surveillance.
+++ath0
It's probably too small for some crazed religious fanatics with the bare minimum of training to hit. WTC was too easy. Anyways, I doubt it's a major target.
Well I've tried them all and it might sound queer, but my favorite drug is a nice cold beer
beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer
beer beer beer beer beer beer beer beer
we love beer
That's funny! Somebody mod this up
I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your [school] down.
Only problem was shooting the CD. Kept missing the damn thing.
My problem was I kept hitting them. Well, I would have if they didn't already have a hole in the middle that my bullets kept passing through.
I suppose if you aren't very good at it, a CD-ROM is a good target.
thanks, you too.
Stupid like a fox!
"Well," said the wolf " then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in." So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down and ate the little pig.
"You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life
That would really burn up, if say, a 767 crashed into it, wouldn't you agree?
Hey they've got Blue Peter on the case ...
threadeds blog
Did anyone else catch the date of that article? Do they observe April Fools day in the UK?
The school is designed to have a 20 year lifespan. After that, it is supposed to be recycled.
Lets hope the big bad wolf doesnt come around.
Did anyone catch the April 1st 2000 date?
This is an april fools, and an OLD one too!
You guys call yourself forward thinking? Sure, if it was something about TiVo, or the latest Quake knockoff, I'm sure you'd be all over it, but try to stretch your minds a little.
Yes, it's cardboard. And as I seem to have to point out to every single person who makes a rudimentary crack about cardboard melting when it gets wet: Milk cartons are made out of cardboard. They hold liquid for weeks at a time! This is not rocket science, people. It's design science.
I have been looking at cardboard as a building material since about 1990. It works. It's cheap. It can be made to withstand many of the stresses of the environment. (My design professor, Harold Cohen, built untreated cardboard domes in the 1960's that sat out for a year in the rain and snow of Southern Illinois. They didn't melt. They worked just fine.)
I've worked with friends to design low-cost emergency shelters for disaster relief and the homeless. And just like all of you, most of them couldn't get past the idea of cardboard melting. So I went with a corrugated plastic material, made just like cardboard, but made from milk-bottle HDPE type-2 plastic. Totally recyclable, and totally waterproof. (Once again, designed to hold milk for weeks, just like the cardboard cartons. :-) ) You can find images of the dome-building
party we held at my house in 1998 here
and can see some of the results. This dome was about 12' in diameter and 5' high at the center. It was a 1/2 to 1/3 scale model of what we'd deploy to disaster victims or the homeless. The total cost of materials was about US $50.
Standard building materials for housing cost about US $110 per square foot of area covered. This corrugated plastic drops the price down to US $0.50-$1.00 per square foot covered. If you use cardboard, that price falls another order of magnitude to about US $0.05-$0.10 per square foot covered. So you see, it's not just eco-friendly, and it's not just recyclable. It's also up to 1100 times cheaper than doing it the old-fashioned way. So even if it did wear out after 3 months, as one pundit wrote in these comments, you could keep replacing the building for about 400 years for the same cost. Which is far more than a standard school will last.
-Pat
The basic truth about building is that walls are cheap. Architectural details cost. Systems (plumbing, electrical, HVAC) cost. Windows cost. But big flat walls are cheap. This is why alternative building systems don't get very far. They address the wrong problem.
The initial press release is dated 1st of April, but there is enough else on different days to convince me...
Although the initial date is (perhaps unfortunately) April Fool's, the BBC article is genuine. That said, it would have been quite funny if it were an April Fool - quite elaborate, and very convincing. Oh, well - it's real, how boring.
But what about the cost of the construction workers? The building materials are usually not the largest cost for the construction of a building. Given this is specialized construction, I am sure the number of construction companies able to build these structures are few and expensive. Would the school district want to pay to have the schools torn down and rebuilt every 20 years?
That's assuming that they last 20 years. What are they doing to resist being damaged due to vandalism? The biggest problem will not be the weather, but juvenille delinquents scarring the external shell causing water to enter and weaken the structure. A Polish friend of mine said that at one time vehicles in his country had bodies made of heavy cardboard/pressboard coated with enamel paint. It was ok until the paint cracked and water seeped in and caused it to rot and smell. He said he once saw a guy get so mad at his rotting car that he put his fists and feet through it and ripped it apart.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Why not get a bunch of trained attack beavers? At least you wouldn't have to worry about the building falling on top of you. However, I don't think those guys have a problem with getting killed.
I recall seeing a special on tv in school once as a young lad in the mid 80's where a man out in the desert of the states made his whole house out of aluminum cans and tires. apparently it was really good at insulating.
at the time, I was just amazed that he washed so many cans, and didn't crush them all up in the process.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
More kids blathering on about the benefits of recycling. "Look Mom, I recycled my juice box! Don't throw away those toilet paper rolls, it's bad for the Earth!"
sulli
RTFJ.
This all looks interesting, but the picture I don't get is the mock-up of the interior. Looks good as a completely hollow interior, but why is there a gigantic kid walking around on top of two tin cans? Is this going to be some sort of circus classroom where kids learn stilt techniques?
mogorific carpentry experiments
The solar flashlight is actually
i ch t.pdf
doable _if_ you use the panel to
charge a battery...BTW...
Read
http://www.cardboardschool.co.uk/content/maastr
So you actually know what you're taliking about.
Buckminster Fuller obtained a patent for paperboard domes in 1959. These domes were extensively tested by the U.S. Marines and won architecture awards around the globe. This method of architecture is sound and worthy of support. I am surprised that only one slashdot comment mentions the history of paperboard / cardboard architecture.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
The Derrick Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good (among other things)
How can the kids expect to learn if the building can't even support their weight?
- Alex
Cardboad building... Paper areoplanes...
-Paul
www.lpbk.net - It might be in bad taste, but come on... how many of you thought it too?
-Paul
www.lpbk.net - A complete waste of a domain name if ever I saw one