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Take the blood of a freshly slaughtered animal. Mix thoroughly with preservatives and sand, pour into square molds, and bake for one hour. Allow to cool — then build your home from the result. No, really.
At least, that’s what Jack Munro, an architect with a passion for material research and experimentation, would like us to do. He’s been experimenting with weird and wonderful techniques to make new building materials, and he’s stumbled across one which uses fresh animal blood as its base. He explains:
Animal blood is one of the most prolific waste materials in the world. The blood drained from animal carcasses is generally thrown away or incinerated despite being a potentially useful product.
The invented process involves mixing fresh blood with a preservative (EDTA, prevents bacterial / fungal growth on the material) and sand. This mixture was then placed in a form work and baked for 1 hour at 70 C. This application of heat is sufficient to coagulate the blood proteins into a solid insoluble mass which bonds the sand into a stable solid.
The resulting material is cheap, surprisingly strong and waterproof. Because it’s made of a prolific waste product — unless you eat a lot of boudin noir — it seems like a perfect building material for poorer countries around the world.
If you’re interested, you can read all about Jack’s research—from stirring blood in a bucket to compression testing his bricks—over on his site. [Jack Munro via Frank Swain]
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Wouldn’t vegetarians and vegans refuse to live in such a house?
Indeed. You’d need to find a substitute for blood that looked the same, had the same texture, but tasted of cardboard. Quorn are go-to people, I believe.
I guess there would also be connotations for followers of certain religions as well depending on the animal in question e.g. pigs for Jews and Muslims and cows for Hindus
I think this idea is aimed at third world countries, and I doubt there are many vegetarians in such places. And as a vegetarian, I probably wouldn’t refuse to live in such a house. If this stuff is just waste product that wouldn’t be used otherwise, it’s not resulting in death and thus I don’t have an issue with it.
Not sure how you can say that you doubt there are many vegetarians living in 3rd World countries? I would guess that a large proportion of people in countries like this are vegetarian.
I think he meant that there aren’t many people who are vegetarians on moral grounds in 3rd world countries.
In my experience visiting 3rd world countries in Africa and Asia people there don’t understand the concept of vegetarianism. Yes, there are people who hardly ever eat meat but that’s because they can’t afford it not because they choose not to for ethical reasons many do not have that luxury and it is an entirely alien concept to many cultures.
The only reason meat or animal products are turned down in 3rd world countries is for religious reasons.
I probably should have proof read that comment before hitting submit because it’s not well written but hopefully the gist of what I’m saying comes through.
Most don’t mind using joinery that uses glue, or car tires that use animal products, or really most things that don’t directly appear to use animal products (e.g. plastic bags, bio-fuels, toothpastes, etc.).
If it isn’t obviously animal product based, most people don’t mind as long as they don’t know. Even when they do know, they’re often resigned to having to put up with it – my vegan friend is tired of staying on his feet every time he goes somewhere with leather sofas.
So what you’re saying is, we could build a whole town out of this stuff to create a happy, vegan-free carnivore zone?
Who knew it could be so easy and so eco friendly.
Except the poorer countries are already more than familiar with using animal blood as construction material…
Good argument. I especially liked all the examples and references you gave to highlight your point.
Are you kidding? Using blood in construction is about as old as construction itself. The only upgrade here is mixing it into the bricks instead of mortar, but since bricks are already made of clay and water, that’s not much of an improvement to the third world countries.
No. Interesting though.
Just make me a whole lot of black pudding, damnit
Seriosu question: Would these smell like black pudding?
Unlikely unless they added the spices too.
should use pulverized old people too. plenty of them