In my upcoming small-houses book, a few of the houses cleverly adapt materials for different uses. Metal roofing, for instance, on a house might appear as siding on an outbuilding, or vice versa. In both appliations, the metal is highly durable. Its use in different locations can help tie different buidlings or different elements of one building together. Since there's a huge range of metal products that are adaptable to both installation types, there's plenty of room to get creative, all while potentially unifying a collection of buildings or a collection of building elements. A multipurpose material can be a good fit for a house chock-full of multipurpose solutions.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast