According to a number of publications, a brewer came up with a bottle of a special shape - people who are not available to the usual building materials, could be built from such a container at home. We checked the reliability of such messages.

The author of the publication on the website Novate reportsthat the Heineken concern developed a bottle of special shape - residents of poor countries could use the container as building material. It is important that such an analogue of bricks was not only very accessible, but also absolutely free, because the devastated bottles were then thrown away, and not sent for processing. Often it was not difficult to find them in public places, for example, in parks or on the beaches. This story is also told by portals "History of things", "The world is beautiful", Fishki.net and users social networks.

In the early 1960s, Alfred Heineken visited the islands of the Caribbean. The businessman was struck by empty beer bottles lying on local beaches, and decided to change the design of the container that his company uses. Heineken thought: the bottles can be released rectangular and used instead of peculiar bricks. Against the background of the usual building materials, such a development has noticeable advantages: in particular, glass passes the light better, and also retains heat well.

Surprisingly, this story is true, her confirms Heineken Collection Foundation is a special organization that engaged preservation of the historical heritage of the company. According to her, to implement the idea, the company turned to the architect John Habraken, who developed two projects. Alfred Heineken did not like the first, and the second called Wobo became successful - in 1964 more than 100,000 such bottles with a volume of 0.3 liters and 0.5 l were produced. The container of rectangular shape and with convexities on the sides easily acted as “bricks”, fastened with cement or other solution.

However, the idea of bottles of “bricks” was not fully realized, having met the resistance from Heineken marketers. Experts considered this to “damage the image” of the company. Nevertheless, at least one building from such bottles was built - Alfred Heineken erected a garden house on his own villa near Amsterdam. Architectural Bureau of Habraken Discussed The construction of their headquarters from bottles, but the project was not implemented.

Wobo bottles anticipated the concept of use of recyclables that appeared later and won the world and were in their own revolutionary ones. One of the first copies even Exhibited In the London Museum of Victoria and Albert. On the Museum’s website, a bottle developed by Harbaken according to the idea of Heineken is called "an innovative example of industrial processing and adaptive re -use of materials."