Shipping container housing

I love green design. There’s a whole bunch of great sites around with ideas for sustainable and recycled housing… Since the geodesic post gets so much interest I thought I’d add another about shipping containers. Inhabitat got me started on this with an article about a home in France made from eight repurposed containers.

This one is from another article about a smaller home in California that was finished with a veneer.

Housing isn’t the only thing that can be constructed from repurposed shipping containers. This is a school built in 1998, from an article at Web Urbanist which also features several interesting ideas for offices.

This one comes from Container City. The portholes are a really appealing and appropriate detail.

From Quebec, this home has been finished with wood veneer. Not sure what I like more, the home or the location. I would definitely have gone the part treehouse on this spot.

Someone else’s take on the combination tree house and shipping container home.

Ecofriend published a collection of container buildings which included this student accommodation in Amsterdam.

The roof on this container guest house in San Antonio is a garden, which will help insulate the building. There are some fantastic photos in that article from HomeDSGN.

Here’s one that’s been refitted with glass panels. The Container Homes site also has a whole bunch of other ideas and images that are worth a squizz.

Another wood and rendered finish on this gorgeous container home.

This is exquisite. A garden roofed boat house/container home. From Cove Park residence for artists in Scotland.

Of all these I think this is my favourite concept for exterior. Where the San Antonio guest house had a roof garden, this one has climbing and trailing plants trained over at least one wall. There are many varieties of trees and bushes which could be adapted as espaliers to cover external walls as well. You could have either flowering ornamentals or fruit and berries as your external home insulation. This would be an inexpensive way to install a pleasant facade on the container if you didn’t want the cost of wood panelling or other finishes.

Container housing is not a new idea though the creative ways in which people construct and finish the homes are incredibly creative and becoming more and more so. Here’s a few more interesting links to designers and builders of container homes and offices.

Pre-fab shipping container homes were finalists in the Re Burbia suburban design competition.

PFNC Global Communities supplies low cost pre-fab housing units.

The Residential Shipping Container Primer has do it yourself plans and ideas for container homes.

Glennon Sea Can is another building site on which the builder is detailing construction as he goes. That’s going to be a huge home.

And last but not least, the design for a park at Pier 57 in New York. Check out the underwater section!

So if you had a spot on the bank of a lake or perhaps river, you could have yourself a home that was part underwater, part house boat, part tree house… all from old shipping containers. Covered in trees and gardens.

At the other end of the scale is the very simple, low cost and even portable housing. With permaculture techniques that can reclaim arid land, solar panels for power and container homes, there really isn’t any excuse at all for Australians to be homeless. All we’d need is a political will.

How much fun would it be working on projects like that, to set up zero net “villages” for the homeless and long term unemployed and disabled?