Seven Strange Houses made of Recycled Materials
Would you live in a house made of newspaper? What about a beer can house?
Bottle House
Kaleva Bottle House was built in 1941 by John J. Makinen. This is located in Kaleva, Michigan and built with 60,000 bottles. The first bottle house was constructed by William F. Peck using 10,000 beer bottles in 1902 in Tonopah, NV.
Beer Can House
Beer can house was built by John Milkovisch in 1968 with 39,000 beer cans. This is in Houston, Texas. This is opened to public with regular weekend hours.
There is another beer can house built by Jeff with the help of his father Fred, friends and other family members during 1998-2001. More than 56,000 different cans were used for this house and this is considered the largest beer can house of its kind in the world. The collection is divided into geographic regions, with separate rooms for each region.
This is Scandinavia room and it includes cans from Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway.
Cardboard House
A man in Coimbatore designed a house with cardboards which has two floors. It has portico, hall, kitchen, dining room and toilet all joined together with wood.
Glass House
The glass house was built in 1949 by Philip Johnson in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Newspaper House
Newspaper house was constructed by Sumer Erek in London. This was formed with a purpose to show how the free news papers were wasted on the streets. This news paper house was formed with 150,000 discarded free papers and they were packed inside a wooden frame.
Paper Pulp House
This paper house is made out of news papers and located at the North of Boston, in Rockport, Massachusetts. It was built by Mr. Elis F. Stenman, a mechanical engineer in 1922. He also designed the machines that make paper clips. All the furniture of house also made out of paper.
This is a piano made out of paper by Elis.
Scrap House
Scrap house was constructed by a team of San Franscisco architects, artists, contractors and engineers in anticipation of World Environment Day 2005 using only scrap.
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Very good article!Take care!
What an maazing idea! Reusing is good, and look how far some of these people have gone. I would love to visit each one of them.
Very interesting article
very interesting article with unique pictures.
Thanks for the encouraging comments Chan, Rookie, Louie and Neelam.
Very interesting ideas, uses, and environmentally friendly 
That’s great! I would love to see some of them in person.
awesome houses,
Amazing! I have seen a few of these on tv but it is still amazing to see what people will use to build with! Great article!
I had to come back and read this article again. I was thinking about all the trash in my house, so came back to see what i could reuse it for.
Thanks for your encouragement Icy, Karen, Nobert, Christy and Rookie.
very nice article….thanks….
Great article- amazing what some people will build a house from.
How interesting. I wonder how the bottle house was constructed. To look at it, you wouldn’t know what it was made of. The newspaper house makes a good statement. We stopped getting the newspaper because we can read them online.
Good article, Valli.
Thanks for reading and commenting Swapna, Moses and Darlene.
A very enjoyable read here Valli.
I had to come back and read this article again. I was thinking about all the trash in my house, so came back to see what i could reuse it for.
How interesting. I wonder how the bottle house was constructed. To look at it, you wouldn’t know what it was made of. The newspaper house makes a good statement. We stopped getting the newspaper because we can read them online.
We are so wasteful. We realy should build our houses from recycled materials.I knew a man who built his house out of tin cans. He filled each can with dirt. I am not sure but I think they were held together by cement. He also flattened out the cans and roofed his house with them.
Thanks for the info Ruby and thanks for reading Anne and Webrouzer.
id hate it rained and you lived in the newspaper house! great article!
Thanks Alexa.
Cool article – great subject!
Thanks RJ Evans for reading and commenting.
Very cool article.
Best wishes.
Sincerely,
-Liane Schmidt.
Thanks Liane for reading and commenting.
Wow! I am loving the beer can wall! and the paper house! and the scap building! This is great!
Thanks for the comment, ThisNachoIsCalledNic.
Nice article. Ive been to the pulp house north of Boston and the place is crazy. The furniture are made so nicely are usable.I also made a beer garden years ago with tons of empty beer cans, we planted them in my Mom’s garden and had a beer garden…hahahaahah
Wow…I can not say I would want to live in any of these, but they are really cool. I wonder what kind of person wants to live in a glass house- LOL. Great read. Thanks
so for the cardboard and newspaper houses? what happenes when it rains?
All these houses look good but what I don’t understand is, how much safe it is to stay in these houses?
Probably we may not seriously stay in them. They are good for beauty, decoration and exhibition.
If this is really a kick butt Idea how much do they cost to construct???? doesn’t say in the articles. Are they sturdy, or affordable!!???
i built a small house,16 by24 feet almost entirely from discarded materials i salvaged. I utulized logs for post and beam construction of the frame, around the perimeter. Then i used plywood garage door panels for vertical SIP(structural insulated panels,) attached to the plywood floor and the beams around the top of the wall. Inside, i used discarded crate material osb sheets for drywall, and taped and painted it like drywall. Outside, i covered the front with left over cedar lap siding, and the sides and back with strips if 1 by 3 nailed over the joints between the panels.I used 4 by 4 by 12 ft pallet boards for roof rafters, 1 by 6 crate boards for exposed ceiling, over which i put 2 inch thickfoam panels covered by steel sheeting, which i also found in a dumpster. I then covered this with regular used metal roofing. Finally i got kitchen and bath cabinets and appliances at the dump, and bought new carpet and vinyl at a closeout sale at Lowes. David Todd
I am amazed that people can come up will such fantastic ideas. It doesn\’t matter weither global warming is happening or not recycling is cool and is a great material if you want to make something fun and exciting. That rubbish has got to go some where and why not use it to create houses. All I want to know are they affordable for the average family? If not how can we make them affordable?
your ideas rock
am a fan and would like to follow your steps..someday, i would like to build small house out of recyclable materials. wish majority of the world populations will learn to love recycling..God speed.
I really thought this was a great idea to write about. Very creative and fun to read.
This article is really interesting.Make More!
