More on Shipping Container Housing
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 06.19.06
Container architecture is all the rage these days-They are cheap, strong and courtesy of the American trade deficit, piling up like mad. They are also narrow inside, usually uninsulated and the floors are often treated with toxic insecticides. TreeHugger has covered the subject here , and Adam Kalkin's Push-button house here. There was a good overview published in SF Gate this week: "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 won't overproduce these steel boxes forever. And even if it does, that overproduction won't be enough 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." ::SFGate via ::sploid. For more information visit ::FabPrefab's Container Bay.
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Are Your Floors Covered in Pesticides?
- Green Glossary: Nature Deficit Disorder
- iPhone 3GS: Snap Close-Up Pictures Like a Pro (Video!)
- Green Glossary: Silent Spring
- How to Make Your Own Infused Vodka
- Six Soothing Summer Beauty Treatments—Fresh from the Farmers' Market
In the book The Long Emergency, it's James Kunstler's view that the end of cheap oil is the end of globalization. We might as well use all those idle shipping containers for something.
Reuse is great but this one looks like the inside of a prison. I'd love to see some more creative examples. Maybe there's a way to cut them up and make some new shapes or bend them, who knows?
I love shipping container architecture but it's true that there are some problems that need to be overcome. Please take a look at the promotinonal website for Container City, a colorful interesting looking container construction that over comes both the prison block looks and the 8-foot width problem:
http://www.containercity.com/
What would overcome the expense of shipping an empty box would be for some crafty entrepreneur to come up with a shipping containter house kit that gets shipped in the container which will become the house. My brother and I have been idly chatting about the possibility of building a container cottage and a kit would certainly make us more likely to carry it out.