House of Blood

It would seem that people have been exploiting livestock for a long time and carefully. Everything goes into business: meat and milk, wool, bones and hooves. However, most of the blood goes to waste. Jack Munro, an architecture student at London's University of Westminster, is not happy with this waste, and his strange project "Blood Bricks " will allow not to waste a single drop.

Photo: jsmunro.co.uk

For his unpleasant experiments, Jack Munro collected 40 liters of blood from four bulls directly at the slaughterhouse (admitting that the collection process was imperfect and led to large blood losses: theoretically, three times as much could have been obtained). It was necessary to add an anticoagulant (EDTA, 10% vol.) to the fresh blood, otherwise in a few minutes it would coagulate and turn into a useless loose and sticky mass. A preservative was also added (sodium azide, 5 g/l), which ensured the safety of blood components and their protection from microorganisms, after which everything was thoroughly mixed. Such a bloody substance can persist for quite a long time until it is used.

Photo: jsmunro.co.uk

It remained to find a way to remove the water from it and give it a solid form, and the author had to suffer with this. Munro tried different amounts of glacial acetic acid on her. By reacting with albumin, one of the main proteins in blood serum, it should provide stickiness and, after drying , rigidity. After several attempts, the intrepid experimenter found the most reliable recipe. Write it down.

Photo: jsmunro.co.uk

To 250 ml of fresh blood (with EDTA and sodium azide), add 20 ml of acetic acid and (after mixing) an equal amount of sand, then mix and pour into molds. Hardening at temperatures below 70 °C, within an hour bricks made of this material become quite hard. Proteins coagulate into an insoluble and waterproof stable mass. Testing them in the laboratory proved that the blood holds its shape perfectly. You can build a house.

Photo: jsmunro.co.uk

Where? According to the author, anywhere in the “third world” where there is a shortage of building materials (but an excess of blood?). The Briton names the Egyptian oasis of Siwa as one of the suitable places, perhaps forgetting that, from the Muslim point of view, the blood of warm-blooded animals is “najis,” an unclean substance that must be purified after each contact. We may not share this belief, but it is unlikely that even any materialist made of flesh will be able to live peacefully in a house made of blood.

Photo: jsmunro.co.uk