Condo tower made of styrofoam under construction in Brooklyn.

A new contender has stepped up to the plate in the battle for the better building material--styrofoam.

Habitat for Humanity is currently building the first condominium complex in the city made out of the same material that has been used for popcorn in packing boxes, and to keep your coffee hot in the morning.

The 9,200 s/f, three-story, nine unit condo complex in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, will be made out of polystyrene-based Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) in lieu of wood to hold the form of the building. Though ICF has been used in projects across the country for years, New York's stringent building codes only recently approved a form of material that used ICF with metal studs as opposed to plastic studs.

Oddly enough, proponents of the ICF are marketing the foam for its ecological qualities.

"McDonald's had the polystyrene to hold their food and the environmentalists made them take it off the market because it doesn't degrade and stays in landfills for 30,000 years. Our polystyrene will maintain the same integrity for the next 30,000 years. That quality makes it a good building material," said Chris Pearson, president of New York Polysteel, the company that provided the Styrofoam for the project and did the foundation work on the condo.

NY Polysteel's guarantee that ICF's superior insulation qualities will save clients at least 50% on their energy bills, and the support of construction supplier, LeFarge, prompted the nonprofit organization to try the material for its clients.

"These are low income families getting a chance for home ownership, which is really rare in New York," said Rolland Lewis, executive director of Habitat for Humanity in New York. "We're hoping this material will help them save energy in the long run and help keep their costs down. This is important in the context of the market, particularly with the un-predictability and volatility of energy prices these days."

ICF can be constructed by low-skilled labor as it is as easy to assemble as Tinkertoys, according to Pearson. Grooves of four feet wide by two feet high blocks are fit together and clipped with a steel Carolina clips and 22 gauge metal studs. Concrete is then pored into the form. When the concrete hardens, the wall is complete. Possible drawbacks are largely architectural, said project manager Michael Fletcher, of LeFarge Construction.

"It's very hard to change your mind. You can't move a window without a little thought. Once the walls have been pored, it is hard to make structural changes," Fletcher said. "Then, of course, there are some things you can't do with it. If you want a big glass building, polystyrene is not going to work."

Thus far the highest building constructed out of ICF was 13 stories, though an 18-story building is planned for Oklahoma, Pearson said.

Other claims for the material include the extension of lifecycle of the concrete encapsulated in the material for thousands of years, superior sound resistance, and a 250 mph wind rating.

"We have photos in our office of neighborhoods in New Orleans hit directly by Hurricane Katrina as well as the tidal surge, and the houses that were built out of ICF were still standing. All the other houses were gone. It is as if somebody had taken an eraser and wiped them right out," Pearson said.

ICF also has a four-hour fire rating, according to Pearson. "It will not burn, but it will melt. If the source of ignition was there, it would melt, but if you took that source off it would stop melting," he said. Construction on the $3 million BedStuy project is due to be complete at the end of 2007, and may pave the way for future projects. "There is a reluctance for people in the New York industry to try new things, so it is nice to see that Habitat will embrace these new methods and that they are thinking outside that box," Fletcher said. "At the same time, the project is a good testing ground for the material in New York."