Professors Farzana Gandhi and Jason Van Nest are “upcycling” with water bottle roofs.

Two NYIT architecture professors and their students are putting a new-age spin on an age-old construction technique. Using discarded plastic water bottles, the team has created an environmentally friendly roofi ng design that they hope will be adopted in developing nations or for shelters in disaster-stricken areas around the world.

Professors Jason Van Nest and Farzana Gandhi of NYIT’s School of Architecture and Design presented their roofing project last fall at NYIT Gallery 61. With a title refl ecting the typical roofing materials used in many areas around the world, their “Thatch for a New Century” presentation included prototype roofs constructed from water bottles rather than leaves or straw.

"We looked for material that was plentiful and able to be discarded,” says Gandhi.

With an estimated 40 million empty water bottles disposed of annually in American landfills alone, Gandhi and Van Nest struck gold in plastic. In fact, building roofs from water bottles is a form of “upcycling,” a term indicating improvements in a material’s second life.

The professors and 20 students working under the direction of Associate Professor Michele Bertomen received a provisional patent for a bracket that connects water bottles and allows them to be arranged in roof sections.

In a student-led architecture and design/build exercise, students from NYIT’s Old Westbury and Manhattan campuses tested roof designs with sophisticated computer software, researched roofing issues, and built models to demonstrate their project’s feasibility. They also perfected cutting the bottles to ensure they nested together. Their dry run to test their work resulted in just that: a dry, leak-proof, and well-ventilated roof.

The team’s next steps are to build larger prototypes with the help of grants, construct a life-size shelter with a water bottle roof, and brainstorm manufacturing ideas for the crucial plastic bracket, known as the Soda Bottle Interface Bracket or SodaBIB (sodabib.com). The professors are seeking NYIT alumni interested in exploring new ways to help the project grow.

Beyond those tasks, the team is aiming to partner with relief organizations that deploy shelters in disaster areas or developing nations. As the professors envision it, the large pallets of water that are delivered to areas in need can be used to construct a roof. The empty bottles can be cut and positioned on sections of a broken-down pallet, while other pallet sections are used to reinforce the roof structure.

Says Van Nest: “If this can raise the bar and contribute to an expectation that consumer goods are supposed to have at least two lifecyles, we’d have quite a victory on our hands.”

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