In its 157-year history, Heineken treasures many anecdotes. One of the most curious is that of the bottle-brick.
the brewery Heineken was founded in 1864 by Gerard Adriaan Heineken in the town of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). He became world famous in 1886, when he invented Heinekken A yeastwhich gives it its characteristic flavor.
Nowadays Heinekenin addition to its own brand, produces 2.5 million different beers for dozens of companies, and has well-known brands in Spain, such as Cruzcampo or Amstel.
In its century and a half of history it has used dozens of different bottles and containers. One of the most curious the Heinekken WOBO bottle-brickwhich manufactured in 1963:
Using bottles as construction elements was not Heineken’s idea. It was already used in Roman times.
The bottles used to build the walls of a house, if filled with some dark liquid, are an excellent insulator, keeping the house cool in summer, and retaining heat in winter. What’s more quality glass is strong and durable.
The story of the Heineken brick bottle, call Heineken WOBO (WORLD BOttle, bottle of the world), starts in 1960.
The grandson of the company’s founder, Alfred Henry “Freddy” Heineken, who would later become CEO in the 1970s and 1980s, visited the Caribbean island of Curaçao in 1960.
He was shocked by the poverty of the lower classes, which they had no materials to build their houses, While the beaches were full of empty bottlesbecause no one recycled them.
Freddy Heineken combined the two circumstances, and it occurred to him to manufacture a brick bottle. The inhabitants of Curaçao could build their houses with them, and also they would not litter the beaches with the empty bottles, because now they would have a utility.
He hired the Dutch architect N. John Habraken, and for three years they designed different prototypes. Finally in 1963 they obtained the final design: the Heineken WOBO bottle. 100,000 units were manufactured in two different sizes, 350 and 500 mm.
These bottles had rectangular shapeand some protruding sides to better grip the cement and silicone mixture that would be used. In addition, the upper part fitted with the lower part, so that there were no gaps in the wall.
Although they were built a couple of test booths that are still preserved, as you can see in the opening photo of the news, unfortunately these brick-bottles never fulfilled their function. They did not reach Curaçao, and the project did not go beyond the prototype phase.
It is not the only curious bottle of Heineken. In 2008 he launched the Heineken Cubea cube-shaped jar that could be stacked:
It was not intended to build houses, but to save space. But they were hardly used in very limited editions.
There are many other houses built with bottles in the world, although they are still a curiosity, instead of an architectural alternative.