Artist constructs house using shredded bank notes worth €1.4bn
Irish Artist Frank Buckley has built a house in Dublin using shredded bank notes worth €1.4bn! Loosely titled Expressions of Recession, Buckley’s Billion Euro House has been built entirely from recycled materials, and primarily from shredded Euro currency, awarded to Frank for his installation by the national mint under strict terms.
Bricks of mulched, decommissioned bank notes make up the walls, and shredded bills carpet the ground. The house comprises 3 rooms – a living room, bedroom and bathroom – along with a gallery space at the front of the house, which featurse some of Buckley’s own paintings for sale.
According to Buckley’s website: ‘The currency acts as insulation and the billion euro house is actually a very appealing dwelling’. ‘It’s just a pity it took so much money to build!’, he jokes, when in actual fact the house cost just €35 (£28.86) to build, given that all the bank notes have been decommissioned.
He has been building the house 12 hours every day, and living on-site since December last year. And now he is welcoming tourists to visit his new home in an effort t spark a debate about Ireland’s failing economy. He also plans to dismantle the house and take it on a global tour as a mobile gallery.
It was in 2009 that Buckley he started using currency as a medium, resulting in over 50 pieces. Encouraged by the response the currency evoked in viewers, he struck upon the idea of building a house out of bricks made of the shredded currency. When the Glass House was made available for the project, he built the house in the space of three months to the level where it now has three walls, multiple sub-installations and his full gallery of paintings.
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