Robbie Williams CDs will be used to pave roads in China

EMI has announced that "unsold copies" of Rudebox, by British pop star Robbie Williams, "will soon be used to resurface Chinese roads."
More than a million copies of the CD "will be crushed and sent to the country to be recycled," we read, where they "will be used in street lighting and road surfacing projects."
This reminds me of a house I visited back in September, in Chicago – about which I wrote a short article for the March 2008 issue of Dwell – wherein the owners had pulverized boxes of old vinyl records, added them to a glass aggregate, and used that to surface the floor of their master bathroom. You could actually see tiny, vaguely recognizable pieces of crushed 45s catching sunlight near the toilet... National Geographic also covered the house.
In any case, does all this imply some strange new infrastructural claim to fame?
"You know that CD they used to pave the King's Road?" a man asks you, putting his coffee down as if to emphasize the point. He crosses his arms. "I played bass on that."

(Thanks, Steve!)

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Blogger James Petty, LEED AP said...

have you heard of the houston beer can house?
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/TXHOUbeer.html

January 29, 2008 11:28 AM  
Blogger i. said...

Have you heard about the austrian artist collective Sabotage? They used to run a record label in the 90's, when the label was over, they used all the vinyls stock to cover thedancefloor of the club where they used to play. Check the link:
http://www.sabotage.at/sabotagerecords/index.htm

January 29, 2008 1:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

by "national geographic also covered the house" i first imagined walls floors and ceilings covered in pasted-on glossy photos from the magazines pages, or entire walls created from stacks of back issues...

January 29, 2008 2:41 PM  
Blogger timquinn said...

I calculate a million cds would make a stack about a mile tall. A much better use than paving roads.

One could line a road each side with ten foot columns every five feet for about a quarter mile. Come on, that would be cool. A stack of cds catch the light quite beautifully.

The cds could be filled with back issues of Nat Geo. To add a useless conceptual level.

January 30, 2008 2:44 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was in Bangkok last Month the day after the king's 80th birthday. A fairly large arch over a multilane road was decorated with CDs.

http://flickr.com/photos/aaaaaaaaa/2152778293/in/set-72157603598040545/

January 31, 2008 1:06 PM  
Blogger Toure Zeigler said...

Wow, that has to be humbling

January 31, 2008 10:51 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

CDs?

February 27, 2008 3:47 PM  
Blogger Geoff Manaugh said...

CDs?

They're round shiny things...

February 27, 2008 4:09 PM  

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