We've been brainstorming design ideas for a new structure to sit alongside the Birdhouse and greenhouse next to Better Farm's main garden. The long list of possibilities has been narrowed down to two: an earthship made from reclaimed tires, or a small cottage made entirely out of glass bottles and mortar.
To build a basic wall out of glass bottles, you lay the items out like bricks and use mortar between the rows. For a structure, you'd need to frame out windows and ceilings.

Photo from Instructables.com

Here are some great photos we found on unusuallife.com of particularly excellent bottle construction:

Instead of throwing those glass bottles away, many folks have wondered how to recycle and build with these ubiquitous items.
This photo show walls being constructed on a build in New Mexico by Mike Reynolds at one of his “earthships”.

Apparently back in the 60â€™s Mr. Heineken came up with the idea of makeing the beer bottles and size and shape of bricks, while concerned about the about of litter and wastage beer bottles were causing. They never came to be, however.

Building with bottles has often been a choice of folk artists, early settlers and the poor in some countries, as they used whatever resources they had to build shelter. Agility Nut has a wonderful website featuring bottle houses around the world.

The Airlie Gardens Bottle House was created by a local artist, Virginia Wright-Frierson in 2004. It is officially named the “Minnie Evans Sculpture Garden Bottle House” after an artist/gatekeeper that worked at Airlie for many years. This bottle house is also referred to as the “chapel”. Frierson used bottles of all shapes and sizes as well as cement and chicken wire in its creation.
Riverside Chapel by Martin Sanchez