Amazing Homes and Offices Built from Shipping Containers (Cargo Container Home Designs by Architects & Builders)

Amazing Homes and Offices Built from Shipping Containers

Not just for resourceful squatters, container architecture is taking the world by storm. Recycled freight containers bring efficiency, flexibility and affordability to innovative green buildings, from small vacation cabins to movable cafes, schools and skyscrapers. Containers are an extremely flexible construction method, being modular in shape, strong structurally and readily available. Container Cities offer a reasonably priced alternative solution to traditional space provision. They are ideal for office and workspace, live, work and worker housing.
Container Cities do not even have to look like containers! It is relatively simple to completely clad the building externally in various materials.

Finally the benefits of Container Homes or Cities can truly be seen in short and medium term land use projects. Short-life sites can have Container Houses that simply unbolts and can be relocated or stored when land is required for alternative uses. To date this alternative method of construction has successfully created youth centers, classrooms, office space, artists studios, live / work space and retail space.

Overpopulation, migration and mobility characterize life and living today. Natural catastrophes frequently leave thousands of people homeless; indeed, the idea of home is less constant and more fluid today than it was just a generation ago, and personal space is now a luxury, making us reflect on how much space we need.

Container homes are a fast, green, economical and surprisingly flexible alternative to traditional houses as they provide modern dwellings for any household size – from individual to family and community housing. We look at five container dwellings showing how a steel box can be stylish and environmentally friendly.

Written by Simone Preuss

Cargo container homes show no sign of slowing down. With the ever-growing population of disused and deserted shipping containers worldwide, more and more designers are finding creative ways to adaptively reuse containers to create houses and multi-family homes and more.

HybridSeattle is a West Coast architectural firm that has created several real-life shipping container buildings and envisioned several other fixed and mobile architectural designs based on cargo container modules. Built and unbuilt, their work is impressive and just the tip of the architectural iceberg.

Innovative architects turn used shipping containers into homes.

Rammed earth, sod, yak wool, reclaimed wood, oriented-strand board, straw ... nowadays, the smorgasbord of offerings in alternative building methods and materials is staggeringly abundant, if not a little confusing.

On the one hand, architectural innovators advocate prefabrication to make a better "housetrap." With high-tech products and cutting-edge mass production, they are trying to develop a new housing methodology: designerly, affordable, energy-efficient houses built to withstand anything, come hell or high water. On the other hand, some ecological purists have turned to older methods of shelter building. They embrace sustainable resources like straw and dirt, making homes as natural as a footprint in the sand.

Like most new construction, the problem with the prefab movement is that it typically uses less-than-sustainable resources like steel and wood. (True factory production could reduce our ecological footprint by eliminating the waste typical of construction, but that's still quite far from reality.) And the problem with environmentally sound but old-fashioned building techniques is that they require too much time and skilled labour to solve our society's need for affordable green housing on a grand scale.

So where is an eco-friendly homeowner or builder to turn?

In this era of scouring the earth for the magic bullet in home building, few ideas can compete with the weird, pragmatic beauty of the used shipping container. Cheap, strong and easily transportable by boat, truck or train, these big steel structures now litter the ports of America as mementoes of our Asian-trade imbalance. (Many more full containers arrive on our shores than depart, so ports either ship them back empty -- to the tune of about $900 per -- or sell them.)

Hurricane-proof, flood proof, fire proof, these metal Lego blocks are tough enough to be stacked 12-high empty -- and thus can be used in smaller multistory buildings. Used containers (which can be picked up for $1,500 to $2,000) often have teak floors and sometimes are insulated. The bright orange, blue and rust corrugated boxes may appeal to some. But contemporary hipsters find them not just the ultimate in postmodern appropriation but aesthetically pleasing as well.

And even though containers have little of the crunchy nostalgia of the hay-bale house or the yurt, they trump most other forms of green building because, in the current economy, they are virtually a waste product. Making a building (which can last and last) out of what is essentially a huge piece of industrial detritus takes recycling to a new level.

Using shipping containers as buildings is hardly new -- institutions like the military have been using the structures as temporary offices, bunkhouses and showers for some time. Examples of designers incorporating shipping containers into residential designs date back to 1982.

But in the past couple of years, a field known as container architecture has evolved, offering the hope that what was once only a post-industrial pipe dream can emerge as a practical new building form. A handful of architectural firms worldwide -- from New York to New Zealand -- have built prototypes or plans for shipping-container homes. Most of these designers develop each house or project as a one-off. Still, one prefab factory has begun pumping out little container homes not meant for the military encampment or the disaster relief camp. Rather, they are meant for the discerning homeowner avid for something new.

Since his New Jersey factory began production this year, Adam Kalkin has sold a dozen of his so-called Quik Houses, each based on five shipping containers. These are two-story, 2,000-square-foot homes with skylights and enormous glass windows, equipped with three bedrooms and two baths. The price ranges from $76,000 for the basic kit to $160,000 (with all the bells and whistles like a stainless-steel kitchen and mahogany doors), is under $100 per square foot, not including land or foundation.

Kalkin, a celebrated young architect and artist, has made a name for himself by walking a tightrope between the straight-laced world of architecture and the mad land of performance art. His recent creation -- the "Push Button House" -- is an art installation of a "home" built inside a shipping container with mechanized walls that open like a blossoming flower. His Web site, which promotes his prefab container homes and books, also sells kitschy homemade candy ("classic candy melange") and offers a pay-per-minute phone line for your confessions.

Among the custom amenities in the Quik House promotional pamphlet is a $1,000 dinner prepared by the architect in the client's new home. Kalkin also delves into humanitarian work, including collaborating with fashion model Natalia Vodianova on a series of container-based recreational centers for underprivileged kids in her native Russia.

Given his orientation as an artist-inventor -- not a conventional architect, much less a businessman -- Kalkin is a little dismissive when discussing his place in a movement that he characterizes as "very ideological."

He says he never imagined running a construction factory at the forefront of a new building form. "I just like the found-object quality of these things. It wasn't a rational proposition," he said, adding that he is developing houses made of fabrics and other materials that he declines to mention. "I'm not really part of the movement."

Rational or not, his work is in the vanguard of a building form that is gaining mainstream interest and acclaim. Recently, architect Jennifer Siegal used shipping containers in a custom home in downtown L.A., and architect Peter DeMaria designed a container-based home now under construction in Redondo Beach.

Jennifer Kretschmer, an architect based in San Jose who is designing her first shipping container home for a client in Healdsburg, said that she hopes the designers interested in this form can come together and develop standards. "We are all in an experimental field," she said, "with each of us inventing the wheel ourselves. It would be good to share our failures and successes."

If shipping containers are cheap, transportable, stackable, and able to survive most disasters, why haven't they been widely adopted already?

"Building codes -- that's really our big hurdle," said Kretschmer, adding that even though they are stronger than most construction forms, it's hard to convince planning departments of anything so new. Indeed, although some California counties have allowed shipping container construction, Rancho Palos Verdes has proposed building codes that would disallow any shipping containers as housing.

As long as we are trading with Asia," explained Kretschmer, "there are going to be extra shipping containers, so in this sense, it's a very green product. But I would never advocate using new shipping containers."

In this sense, shipping containers will never -- or at least should never-- be the ultimate building form. Steel is not a renewable resource, and moving it around is far from environmentally advisable. Ideally, our society will only overproduce these steel boxes for a while. And even if it does, more than overproduction will be needed to satisfy our housing needs.

But shipping-container architecture does signal a new creativity among architects and builders that may be more powerful than any magic-bullet building technique. After a hundred years of environmentally disastrous construction methods and escalating real estate prices, the shipping container is more than a harebrained scheme of an eco-shelter movement -- it's a whisper of the weird world of housing to come.

The interest in converting old Shipping Containers into real-world homes is exploding. Following a discussion with an Architect friend about the application of our Home Design software to this design niche I was rather surprised by just how many people are researching and interested in Shipping  Container Homes and Container House Design.

A few years ago we created an add-on module for our Home Design Software for the task of visualization of Shipping Container Modules in the Built Environment; now I am more aware of just how many people are interested in this area, I have decided to make those library modules into a public release of our Home Software.

If you are interested in Shipping Container Design, you might be interested in these two design resources I came across in my research.

The first is a book called Intermodal Shipping Container Small Steel Buildings which is quite a mouth full but its a good resource.

It explains how to purchase steel cargo containers and modify them for use as buildings saving up to 40% over traditional construction methods. ‘

Intermodal Shipping Container Small Steel Buildings is 116 pages and includes photos, diagrams, and plans.

The second is a 200-page Illustrated Manual of Shipping Container Home Design.

This is a 200 Page Illustrated Manual that you can download without waiting for the book shipment.

I have included a series of photographs showing some truly wonderful examples of design genre using this resource – how wonderful they are – who would have thought these beautiful homes began life as humble shipping containers.

Complex Home Design using  Multiple Shipping Containers

The award-winning Redondo Beach House by De Maria Design turns heads with its modern lines and appealing spaces. The luxury beachside showpiece was built from eight prefabricated, recycled steel shipping containers and some traditional building materials. According to the architects, the modified containers are "nearly indestructible," as well as resistant to mould, fire, and termites. Seventy per cent of the building was efficiently assembled in a shop, saving time, money and resources.

One of the containers can even sport a pool! The lessons learned from Redondo Beach House are being incorporated into a line of more affordable, accessible designs, soon available as Logical Homes.

Billed as the largest container city in the world, Amsterdam's massive Keetwonen complex houses 1,000 students, many of whom are happy to secure housing in the city's tight real estate market. Designed by Tempo Housing in 2006, Keetwonen is said to be a roaring success, with well-insulated units, surprisingly quiet and comfortable.

Each resident enjoys a balcony, bathroom, kitchen, separate sleeping and studying rooms and large windows. The complex has central heating, high-speed Internet, and dedicated bike parking.

Keetwonen has proved so popular that its lease has been extended until at least 2016.

Also by LOT-EK is this fantastic concept for a tower at 87 Lafayette Street in New York City. The idea is for a 19-story artists' loft building, built by stacking containers, with staircases at the north and south ends. The roof of the slanted tower would sport solar panels.

The building in front of the bold new design is a historic New York City firehouse, perhaps serving as a visual tie to the past.

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-homes/latest/shipping-container-homes-460309#ixzz1nwuF2bYG.