AZ Containers

Architectural Creations Using Cargo Containers printed from http://weburbanist.com/

This shipping container home from the so-called Zigloo Domestique project in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada is a residential home created by Keith Dewey. The home is built out of old shipping containers, and the owner chose to paint them with an industrial strength minty-green enamel, commonly found on shipping containers today, in order to maintain the container’s roots in the shipping business. While the exterior of the home may look a little rugged, due to the protruding containers, the 2,000 square foot interior of the house is quite comfortable and modern. The project cost about $150 per square foot, compared to a similar quality traditional construction project that can cost about $250 per square foot.

This stunning home is almost like a piece...

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Architect Peter DeMaria's "A Building Spirit"

Dedication Ceremony in Boyle Heights/East LA, CA

I'm not sure if I should give a little dedication or say a prayer or get down and kiss the earth because what has transpired on this site. Nearly two years ago I came to this church and spoke of the value of creating a building that embodied the spirit of the people and the place - but there was no way I could have predicted the process and end result we now see before us.

Knowing that the dedication was today, late last night on my way home from dropping off a friend in San Bernardino County, I stopped by to see how the building looked in the heart of the evening - alone, quiet, at peace and waiting for the new day to arrive. Well at 12 midnight I found an incredible building, beautiful, strong,...

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Modern, Colorful and Creative Shipping Container Home in Houston.

by Bridgette Meinhold, 09/18/09

Shipping container homes just keep on getting cooler. Developers Katie Nichols and John Walker along with architect Christopher Robertson wanted to create affordable and sustainable homes for the emerging hipster crowd – modern, colorful and creative. This single-story home, located on the outskirts of downtown Houston in a “transitional neighborhood,” is made from 4 shipping containers sourced from nearby ports. The house is constructed using some fairly advanced building techniques that make it an extremely sturdy and well insulated structure, not to mention incredibly cool.

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SG Blocks Container House Debuts at West Coast Green.

West Coast Green kicked off this morning and we’re excited to reveal this year’s stunning show house: the SG Blocks Harbinger prefab! Composed of five recycled shipping containers, the home features a durable steel envelope that is capable of withstanding hurricanes in Florida and earthquakes in California. A paragon of sustainability, the Harbinger house also features FSC-certified woods, solar panels, rainwater recycling, and an Agilewaves resource monitoring system. Designed by the Lawrence Group, the prefab was fabricated in a month and assembled on-site in just 4 hours and 47 minutes!

As the crowning exhibit at this year’s West Coast Green conference, the Harbinger House is an incredible exercise in sustainable architecture. The exterior features high-performance glazing and Integrity windows that provide excellent insulation and require less energy to manufacture than traditional windows. All of the wood finishes throughout...

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New Zealand Container Cliff House.

We’re always excited to see architects reuse industrial materials, and in the prefab world there’s no match for the simplicity, low cost, and customization capabilities of the stalwart shipping container. We’ve covered several ways that architects have up-cycled the durable containers into industrial-chic living spaces, and this incredible home in Wellington, New Zealand, is the latest container redux to catch our eye. Composed of three slate grey containers stacked up like blocks beside a hilltop, it strikes the perfect balance between ruggedly engineered construction and clean modern form.

Shipping containers are an intrepid green architect’s dream. They’re essentially durable, ready-made rooms that, with the right set of retrofits, can be repurposed into modular living spaces. Built to weather the test of time and strains of shipping, they also possess a standardized modular structure that gives them great potential for vertically inclined projects.

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A Simple Yet Functional Container Home.

Written by Preston Koerner

There's something about the simple design of this small container home that I really like. It was mentioned on A Site-Specific Experiment, which is run by Chutayaves Sinthuphan out of Bangkok, Thailand. The one-bedroom, one bathroom home was built using two, 20-foot containers with cutouts for windows and doors. There's a prefab bathroom inside and the interior is insulated with a recycled content material.

Located in Thailand, the home features a roof layer that's raised above the home -- not unlike the roof design of the Ultimate Desert House or Cinco Camp. Seems like a great way to use passive ventilation to keep the inside of the home nice and cool.

Over the last few years, we've seen a trend towards using shipping containers in the construction of all sorts of structures. Our site runs an archive of noteworthy shipping container homes to keep you up-to-date on the latest -- make sure to check it out.

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Maison IDEKIT Quebec Container Home.

Written by Preston Koerner

Using seven recycled shipping containers, architect Bernard Morin and wife Joyce Labelle built this contemporary residence in St. Adele, Quebec. The home is the first of many to come for their new company, Maison Idekit, which will help homeowners turn containers into architecturally unique, and inexpensive, homes. The company has two more residential projects set to break ground in the next couple months using a total of twelve container modules.

IDEKIT's first home is 3,000 square feet with four-bedrooms. It cost about $175,000 to build and turns container design on its head. Rather than feature the exposed containers on the exterior, the containers are exposed on the inside -- you can even see serial numbers, dents, and corrugated detail in several places throughout the home. On the outside, the home has five inches of insulation that is topped by brown wood siding.

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Low Tech Texas Container Retreat.

Written by Preston Koerner

In April 2009, this bold vacation cabin received a 2009 Residential Architect Design Award in the custom home under 3,500 square feet category. The NY Times may have noticed, because Kate Murphy also published a feature article about the home last week. Referred to as Camp Cinco, this low-tech retreat was designed by Mark T. Wellen of Rhotenberry Wellen Architects for owner Roger Black and constructed by placing five shipping containers on hand-dug piers. The design is simple and striking.

Camp Cinco spreads the typical home features into different containers. One unit is for storage, another has kitchen amenities, and the last three each have a bed and bathroom. The interiors are clean and minimalist -- just perfect for relaxing in the middle of nowhere -- and behind the cargo doors, each unit has sliding glass doors. That way, the monstrous Texas animals and insects stay outside while the occupants gaze at the passing horizon from the inside.

Similar to what we saw with the steel canopy on the Ultimate Desert House, the roofs on Camp Cinco provide both visual and cooling benefits. The roof will absorb a portion of the heat from the Texas sun (and shade the home, too) while some of the rest of the heat will be cooled by winds passing between the container and corrugated steel....

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LOT-EK Puma City Illustrates Flexible Container Retail.

Written by Preston Koerner | December 5, 2008 |

Realizing this site might be a little overweight in the container architecture department, I'm going to blog this and try to abstain in the next few weeks. But Puma City, like the Freitag Flagship Store in Zurich (only less banged up looking), is another illustration of industrial design and adaptive reuse combined. The 11,000 sf retail installation was designed by LOT-EK and uses three levels of forty-foot containers stacked four units wide to create an incredibly dynamic design.

It's the kind of space that's just ripe for nightlife, what with the second and third level deck areas. I imagine customers can slip on a choice pair of sneaks and go out on the veranda to see if they make them jump higher or run faster.

If you look at the interior image, you'll see that the space is pretty unconstrained -- some IBU floors are cut out to create more air and open space. The whole design is capturing, but what I like most is that Puma City is completely and fully...

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Envision Prefab Ships e-House to Florida

Written by Preston Koerner
UPDATE 3/16/09 - Envision Prefab has gone dark. The website was shut down. Apparently, the company was sold to some company in Panama -- Aaron Newman says the terms of the sale are confidential. If you have any concerns, feel free to CONTACT www.jetsongreen.com/contact

Container architecture has taken on various forms over the last few years. We’ve seen many building types constructed with creativity as architects and developers experimented with cargo containers, from office buildings to apartments, and single-family homes. South Florida based company, Envision Prefab, is bringing container architecture to a new level by creating complete modular housing out of these frames. Envision has tracked the progress of a model home from its initial cutting and through the factory process, ready to be shipped. If you've ever thought about using containers in home design, make sure to read below:
The home starts with the basic cargo containers. Factory technicians mark out the windows, doors, mechanical, and plumbing vents and cut through the corrugated metal walls. The interior wall is completely removed, and the containers are braced to prevent any deflections. In the future living room, the original container doors are welded open, and a balcony is created. Once the welding is finished, the containers are sand blasted and coated with an anti-rust primer before construction resumes.

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