From cradle to cradle
There are many other advantages to polli-bricks as well. They are lighter than wood, glass, or steel, so shipping and installation are easier; when they are assembled, there is no need for highly toxic industrial glue; and they are 100% recyclable. It is claimed that no green building material better fits into the contemporary conservationist ideal of "from the cradle to the cradle."
One problem to overcome was that the flat surface of a plastic bottle just wouldn't be hard enough to deal with the forces of nature on the scale of a building. It turns out that the protruding and intruding shapes on the bricks not only allow them to be interlocked, they also strengthen the surfaces. Drawing on ideas from origami (paper folding), Huang designed the bricks to have angular protrusions alternating with corresponding intrusions. Just as a handful of chopsticks cannot be broken as easily as any one of the chopsticks alone, assembled polli-bricks can tolerate 400 kilograms of impact force per square meter, can resist winds 1.5 times as strong as those of Typhoon Nari (whose wind speeds reached 24.7 meters per second), and can stand up to shocks stronger than those of Taiwan's 921 earthquake in 1999 or the Sichuan earthquake of 2008.
In addition, it is possible to add a "membrane" (which was developed by MINIWIZ, has been nano-engineered, and whose functions include blocking ultraviolet light, preventing static electricity buildup, and being fire-retardant and self-cleaning) onto a layer of assembled bricks in order to achieve maximum protection against wind, vibration, heat, and fire.
And best of all, from the viewpoint of the bottom line polli-bricks cost much less to manufacture than other building materials. They cost out at about NT$3600-4000 per square meter, whereas a curtain wall of comparable specifications made of glass would need around NT$20-30,000, yet would be only one-quarter as effective at keeping out external heat.
Huang is confident that his bricks outperform glass in virtually every respect, though he confesses with a smile: "Probably the only drawback is that PET bottles don't have the same transparency as glass, so you can't see the scenery outside clearly."
A total of 430,000 PET bottles went into the making of the EcoARK. The environmentally friendly and innovative design is said to have achieved at least seven world "firsts."