Our culture doesn't look kindly on homes built of unusual stuff. Even fairy tales frown on them: The big bad wolf blew right through that piggy's straw house. Ditto the porker's house of sticks. And the old woman who lived in the shoe? She didn't know what to do. A house made of paper would then sound crazy, right? Hold on.

Buildings made of paper are real -- and they don't simply turn to mush in a rainstorm. The most well-known of these, the shelters designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, are crafted of cardboard tubes. Resilient and sometimes elegant, Ban's designs have housed people after earthquakes in Japan, India and Turkey. 

A handful of paper homes in the U.S., including an experimental one at the University of Arizona, also have been constructed of baled wastepaper.

But perhaps paper's most promising use in home construction is as a key ingredient in what's often called "papercrete." In a nutshell, it's an industrial-strength papier-mâché that can be made by almost anyone, cheaply, formed into blocks and used like bricks.

"The interest in this has exploded in the last three years worldwide" as people look for cheaper, more environmentally friendly ways to build, says Barry Fuller, alternative building specialist and creator of the Web site "Living in Paper."