World Bottles

The beer magnate Freddy Heineken came up with this idea during a journey around the Caribbean. He wanted to use empty beer bottles as a construction material in order to improve the quality of slums. He asked the architect John Habraken to draw up these stackable bottles in 1962. It failed to proceed beyond a prototype: critics argued that the World Bottle could encourage excessive drinking, and the brewer feared for his enterprise’s image. These bottles are nevertheless a symbol for the improvement of the world through architecture.