A photographer and an architect have encased this Detroit house in ice to draw attention to the housing crisis in the United States. (Pat Jeflyn/CBC)A Michigan man has turned one of Detroit's 20,000 derelict houses into a work of art to demonstrate the reality of the housing freeze in the United States.

The two-storey wooden house on the city's east side is in a neighbourhood filled with homes that people formerly looked after with pride. But mass unemployment and a foreclosure crisis have left the area barren, with houses abandoned or burned out. The ones that are still inhabitable, sell for almost nothing. A house can sell for $2,000 or even less.

Wanting to shine a light on the situation of urban blight, photographer Greg Holm and architect Matthew Radune sprayed the house with water, allowing it to freeze in between.

This home on Detroit's east side is one of approximately 20,000 abandoned houses in the city. (Pat Jeflyn/CBC)The result impressed passersby, who preferred the frozen facade to the rundown house that had sat empty for at least a decade.

"I think it's very beautiful," said Fred Williams. "Never saw anything like that."

"They're doing something for the area," said Brandon Bowman. "It makes the neighbourhood look a lot better, know what I'm sayin'?"

Nino Wilson said encasing the house in ice, also makes the area safer.

"You see houses burned up, you got to worry about kids walking to school getting snatched in abandoned houses ... rapists and stuff," Wilson told CBC News.

While the project's key goal is to draw attention to abandoned houses in Detroit, it is also about promoting the deconstruction and recycling of derelict homes, rather than simply demolishing them. Holm said he planned a photo shoot for Saturday and then, once the ice melts, to recycle the housing materials.

"The Michigan State Landbank has told us that that is their intention and we want to hold them to it," said Holm.The organizers of the project plan to recycle the building materials in the house once the ice melts. (Pat Jeflyn/CBC)

"There's a lot of good timbers inside this house. We think we can salvage them and we're willing to donate our time to do it."

The State of Michigan has committed $25 million to a program called Cities of Promise, intended to help improve quality of life in the state's eight most poverty-stricken cities, including Detroit. Deconstructing abandoned homes is part of that effort to breathe new life into Detroit, something Holm said will also create much-needed employment.

"There's a lot of people who need jobs and a lot of empty houses here," said Holm. "It seems like an easy concept to put the two of them together."

Warm temperatures Wednesday forced Holm to frantically cover the house with a tarp and direct fans onto the building to stop the ice from melting.