But in the last decade, architects and designers ushered a new age of the Sentry Box, with sustainable, beautifully designed, minimal-impact dwellings. Prefab Houses, out in a new edition from Taschen, documents the history of the factory-made house and features today's most innovative designs.

Buy all properties for a particular color-coded location. For example, Boardwalk and Park Place make up all the properties associated with the location that is identified with the color blue. You can only build houses when you have a monopoly of all the properties that are part of a location.

Tap the first property on the location for which you have a monopoly.

Tap the icon of a house. A house appears on the property. Tap the check mark to buy the house. A message appears asking you to confirm that you want to build the house. Tap the check mark below the confirmation message to confirm the purchase and build the house on your property. The price is automatically deducted from your holdings. Continue this process for the next property at the location when you want to build your next house. You must build houses in parallel, such as one house on each property, then two houses on each property and so on. You cannot build only one house on one property at a location and build three houses on the other two properties.

These houses, which can be plopped down nearly anywhere—on roofs, in deserts, on riverbanks—offer stylish alternatives to mobile homes for the contemporary nomad. Some can be built up in the course of a day, then broken down again, like giant Legos. And, as we all know by now, such homes are far more eco-friendly than resource-guzzling McMansions.

These tiny dwellings echo the structure of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes—the shape, known as an icosahedron, comprises hexagons puzzle-pieced together. Danish architect Kari Thomsen teamed up with engineer Ole Vanggaard to create the two-story grass-roofed cottages from recycled and sustainable materials. They take only one day to raise and seal. They're decked out with solar panels, two bedrooms, a living room, and a brick stove in the kitchen.

The WeeHouse was inspired by the basic principles of sustainable design—building small and efficiently. Framed with steel and wood, the Modular Home comes with bamboo flooring and Ikea cabinets, kitchens, and sinks.