With walls sheathed with everything from street signs and shower doors to fire hoses and phonebooks, ScrapHouse drew tens of thousands of passersby. Built in conjunction with World Environment Day 2005, ScrapHouse illustrates the possibilities—as well as the challenges—of green building, recycling, and reuse. Over the course of just six weeks, a team of volunteers scoured Bay Area dumps and scrap yards. A group of architects, landscape architects, lighting specialists, and metal fabricators gave these materials new life and ScrapHouse its final shape.



ScrapHouse was not allowed the luxury of a permanent foundation; instead, it was built on plywood platform, and disassembled following the World Environment Day celebrations. However, ScrapHouse lives on in print, film, and online, continually attracting inquiries from around the world. Originally conceived as a documentary film, Emmy award-winning filmmaker Anna Fitch filmed every step of the way for a documentary that was broadcast on the National Geographic Channel in September 2006.

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