Source: Flickr

It sounds like something from a fairy tale: one particularly stupid pig built a house made from newspaper.

But this is what the artist Sumer Erik has built in a London suburb. The idea is to highlight the issue of the massive volume of free newspapers thrown away every day. In association with Project Freesheet, a campaign to curb the trend, 1,000 local people worked together to collect and then roll or fold newspapers to make the house. And there it stood for a few days, a silent reminder of our throwaway society.

OK, so as a piece of art it was quite interesting. The house was eventually taken down, and the newspapers recycled. Hopefully it will have encouraged people to think a bit more about their wasteful habits but it has no implications for future architecture.

Or maybe not?

Some serious architects have spent time considering cardboard as a building material. And some years ago, a UK school was built from cardboard.

The architects ‘..set out to test the sustainability of using cardboard within a built project, a material made almost entirely from recycled material and to provide the school with a much-needed, permanent educational and community space. The challenge was to create both a stimulating play space and an inspiring structure that worked with the properties of the material’. -- CABE

But perhaps the greatest cardboard builder is the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban who produced a cardboard tube bridge across a river in southern France.

He first became interested in building things with cardboard following the Kobe earthquake in 1995 when there was a big demand for affordable, but durable homes which could be quickly erected. He then went on to build many units for rehousing victims, churches and even bridges -- in the process building elegant buildings in city centres and simpler structures for the poor in Turkey and India.

To the objection that paper buildings are wasteful or too fragile, Ban has a ready response: “A concrete-and-steel building can be temporary. It can be taken down or destroyed by an earthquake. But paper can last. It’s a question of love. My paper church was still around after 10 years. If a building is loved, it becomes permanent, although buildings don’t always need to be permanent. People are more nomadic today. Factories move to find cheap labor. People don’t go to offices the way they used to. Families grow, they need to move, then children leave, and they move again. It’s always about designing for the particular situation.” -- New York Times

Cardboard houses. Whatever next - a house built of straw?