“He was a little man, who had a strange house. His house is made of cardboard, his stairs are made of paper. » Did you recognize the nursery rhyme? Know that in Brest, we will soon be able to live in the same house as “Pirouette, peanut”. Worn by Brest metropolis habitat (BMH), the project of six recycled cardboard houses will be delivered in a few weeks. Imagined with the Bat’Ipac company, this slightly crazy project will be the first social housing program designed out of cardboard. “We are quite satisfied to be the first social landlord in France to make this type of cardboard house, even if the term can make you smile,” says Georges Bellour, general director of BMH. “In any case, I don’t know if he makes you smile, but he gets people talking a lot, that’s for sure. »
Aligned in the middle of a residential area of the Breton port, the six houses, still under construction, would go almost unnoticed if their construction material was not so unusual. Apart from a wooden skeleton and metal stakes to anchor the house to the ground, almost everything is made of cardboard, from the floors to the ceiling to the walls. The self-supporting panels, which form the bulk of the structure, are made up of several plates of recycled cardboard sheets, glued to each other, and covered with a waterproof membrane. It is therefore necessary to count 5 tonnes of cardboard per house. A “healthy product”, good thermal and acoustic insulation, which generates 72% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional construction (in concrete blocks and mineral wool), according to Alain Marboeuf, president of the Bat’Ipac companyat the origin of the construction process.
This project also has the particularity of not incorporating any trace of concrete. A significant asset as the building sector generates 23% of French greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Cement and concrete alone represent 8% of global CO2 emissions.
Collect old packages to recycle them
With the explosion of online commerce, the recycled cardboard resource is not likely to run out. “It’s all these packages that end up in our yellow bins and that we will recover to be able to make cardboard blocks again,” describes the business manager. “And there, you find them in your walls, in your floors, in your roofs. » For those who doubt the solidity of the process, know that it withstood the passage of storm Ciaran and gusts of 150 km/h.
A little more expensive than a traditional construction a few years ago, the price of the cardboard house is now “equivalent” due to inflation in the cost of raw materials, according to Alain Marboeuf, who puts forward a range of “ 1,500 to 2,600 euros per square meter” depending on the type of building. The Brest houses must be completed in April 2024.