We have a problem

Australia is the driest continent on earth, yet
Australian's are the highest water users in
the world. Australia is one of the biggest
exporters of water through its exporting of
meat, particularly beef. Each kilogram of
beef requires up to 50,000 litres of water to
produce. We have no black water recycling
even though numerous other 1st world countries
have been recycling black water for
decades. Grey water recycling is considered
a relatively new idea in Australia and has
been implemented infrequently. In Australia,
we are very unwise with our water and it is
running out. It may not be long before
Australia is virtually uninhabitable and
Australian's may soon become a burden on
our South pacific neighbours as we increasingly
become environmental refugees.

Stanford University

In the early 1990's, for only a brief period,
Stanford University began exploring water
structures. By pumping water into polypropylene
bags the designers could create
surprisingly efficient, gothic like structures.
As water also provides a lot of thermal mass,
these structures were also extremely
thermally efficient. The polypropylene bags
could be formed in a huge variety of organic
shape and sizes. They could be rolled up and
easily transported to anywhere in the world
where, on adequate footings, they could be
pumped full of water. They were some of the
quickest and easiest structures to be built.

Poop house

No matter which way you look at it, building
a house is never green. It takes vast quantities
of materials with high levels of embodied
energy and water and it creates a lot of
waste. Even houses constructed from
recycled materials often have an incredibly
high embodied energy to implement. So we
at Andrew Maynard Architects asked
ourselves "what's the greenest building" and
we concluded that the answer was "no building
at all". But rather than be nihilistic about
it we decided that a house should build itself
through a lengthy period of assembling
house hold waste. Through adopting similar
structural logic employed at Stanford University
the Poop house is a water structure that,
over time, takes all household bio-waste,
including human excrement and food, and
slowly constructs the walls and roof.

Timeline


[diagram 01] - 0 years

The inner layer has been filled to create an efficient water
structure. The outer lay is empty, waiting for household
waste to fill it.

[diagram 02] - 10 years

The inner layer is partially full of frequently recycled
water. Some water has been lost over time however the
structure remains solid as the external layer, full of
compacted solid waste, applies pressure to the internal
layer.

[diagram 03] - 20 years

The majority of the water has been used. The water had
been recycled countless times, however evaporation and
human activity has gradually removed the water from the
home. A solid, dry structural layer of solid household
waste remains.

Materials

The polypropylene forms can be fabricated to a variety of
shapes and sizes and are rolled to a relatively small size
making them highly transportable.

The internal layer is clear polypropylene.This layer holds the fresh water.
The outer layer is a solid colour. This layer contains the household waste that will eventually become the structure of the house.

Process

Once the polypropylene forms are on-site they simply
need to be positioned on a structural slab and pumped
full of water. You would purchase the water required to fill
your home, as you would with any other building product.
The water remains part of a closed system therefore an
average sized house would have around 20 years worth
of water.

Solid waste is delivered directly to the outer layer where
the water is filtered out of the solids. Here the solids form
a dense structural layer over time [diagram 02].

A closed system has been formed so that minimal water
is lost during usage and the recycling process. No
closed system is perfect though, therefore water is lost
through evaporation, spillage, human activity etc.
Hence over a long period of time (around 20 years) the
majority of the water will be lost, however a thick
thermally efficient structural wall will remain, constructed
of solid household waste. The house has been erected
for almost no cost. The internal skin can either be refilled
or reclaimed as extra internal space [diagram 03].

Location