You would have to multiple the “ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall” from the old tune by six hundred thousand to make this whole glass home. It took one artistic builder nearly two decades to complete this eclectic project, constructing it piece by piece – as much a never-ending work of sculpture or do-it-yourself scrap-pile as a house.
Some of the wall work is structural but much is decorative . There is no clean line between function and decor, as a sturdy and solid glass, mud and cement surface gives way to towers, ornaments and abstracted gargoyles that dot almost the entire property.
It is not just the bottles: hub caps, old bicycles and other metal, plastic and glass odds and ends have likewise become entangled in this weaved web of recycled wonders.
Of course, while he did most of the building on his own, it ‘takes a village’ to raise something on the scale of this amazing recycled home. Buenos Aires artist Tito Ingerieri relied on friends, families and neighbors to save and send him their used bottles – a process that became as second-nature as setting out the trash over the years of construction. As a strange sort of thank you gift back to the region: when the south winds blow the home sounds the alarm through whistling glass walls, alerting residents and locals to a higher-than-average flood potential.
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