Chic Houses from Recycled Materials

"The little old cottages and the big, newly built ones near Cedar Lake in Minneapolis express a comfy view of home that has spanned a century. Onto one of these tree-lined streets now comes NowHaus, a luminescent blue box that offers a different idea of home."

"The exterior is silvery blue translucent vertical panels installed over salvaged billboards. The dining-room wall features recycled slate, so architects can doodle on their walls instead of napkins or kids can draw after dinner. A small bathroom enclosed in more translucent walls doubles as a large-scale light fixture for the living room."

" 'We had a build-up of ideas,' after other residential projects, said architect Paul Neseth, partner with Wynne Yelland in the Minneapolis design-build firm Locus Architecture."