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Beach House makes it hard to believe it's shipping containers.

It’s hard to contain one’s enthusiasm for this Beach House. The home, constructed with a combination of prefabricated shipping containers and traditional buildings materials, is a stunning beachfront residence. It is the first in a line of homes that will be available. The architect has said that he considers shipping containers the icons of the global age: “stacked containers create a powerful imagery on the landscape.” With that, we can certainly expect to see more recycled shipping/storage container architects to come from design studios and achitects world wide.

For further information regarding our storage containers for rental or sales, contact AZ Containers at 877-292-6937 to see how the most basic steel box to a customized, climate controlled storage or workspace with windows, they’ll have your solution on it’s way to you fast.

Container House, Berkeley, Calif.

Living in three, 40-foot refrigerated (instant insulation!) shipping containers has never looked so, well, normal as the Container House from Leger Wanaselja Architects. The 1,350 square-foot, three-bedroom Bay Area abode features green bells and whistles throughout including bamboo flooring, dual-flush toilets, wool carpeting and EnergyStar appliances. Because of its traditional (but far from staid) appearance, this beauty is the ideal place to shock new houseguests with the news that “Surprise! You’re standing in a repurposed shipping container!”

Shipping container homes go 'mini', and with great results.

'Tis the season for gingerbread houses, miniature Christmas villages, dollhouses topped with bows ... and tiny shipping container homes?

It’s a definite sign of the times when instead of bestowing your little princess with Malibu Barbie’s Dream House or a battery operated hamster habitat for Christmas, you can present her with a miniature shipping containerreplete with baltic birch flooring, sliding panel doors, and tasteful, doll-sized modern furniture that's decidedly Design Within Reach meets Fisher Price. The only thing missing is a mini solar array.

Although I’ve written about both eco-friendly dollhouses and the green building practice of transforming derelict shipping containers into beautiful modular homes in the past, M112 Pod Miniatures from Paris Renfroe Design are something totally new, and well, a bit unexpected.

St. Paul, Minneapolis-based “industrial modernist” Paris Renfroe is established at designing life-size modern furnishings but his foray into doll-house scale shipping container homes is a relatively new one. Each M112 Pod Miniature home is 20 inches long, 8 inches wide, and 8.5 inches high. They’reavailable (for $175) in an array of colors including White, Orange, Gray, Apple Green, and Sky Blue or for a bit extra ($250) you can order a M112 Pod home in natural rust.

As mentioned, each home is outfitted with baltic birch floors, ceilings, and walls; sliding panel doors; a frosted window wall; a metal rung ladder for roof access; and port holes in the ceiling and floor for stacking. Renfroe’s 1:12 and 1:1 scale furnishings — his own designs plus iconic pieces from Minotti and other designers — are available separately.

Pretty impressive, I must say, and an interesting way to get your kids hooked on both modern design and the possibilities of green building at an early age. What do you think? Would an architecturally advance dollhouse like the M112 Pod fly in your home? Or would you rather just stick to traditional, humdrum plastic dollhouses?

For further information regarding our storage containers for rental or sales, contact AZ Containers at 877-292-6937 to see how the most basic steel box to a customized, climate controlled storage or workspace with windows, they’ll have your solution on it’s way to you fast.

Realistic hope in Haiti.

Designed to provide emergency housing for hurricane survivors, shipping containers are now being eyed for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

The preparation and design of shipping container emergency homes is simple and efficient. The 320 square-foot shipping containers are modified to allow airflow while still at the port and are then transported to the site where they are coated in colorful, insulating ceramic paint. Wooden shipping pallets that serve as “pods” for cooking and bathing are added to the interior. Outside, 55-gallon steel drums filled with dirt are placed on the roof of the structure to provide a space for starter gardens or “emergency food restoration.” Health issues like those sparked by the FEMA trailers provided after Hurricane Katrina would not be an issue and looting issues would be minimized.

Although shipping container homes sprouting up in Haiti in the near future is certainly a possibility, it could take some time and further logistical planning considering the port at Port-au-Prince was significantly damaged in the quake. The prototype home hasn’t even been completed at this point. So it won’t be tomorrow…

A new kind of living with storage containers.

Not too long ago, the notion of living in an 8- by 20-foot box was enough to stop a potential homebuyer in his tracks … and send him running for the exits. The rise of innovative green architecture has created in increasingly in-vogue practice: rejiggering, stacking and linking rugged and versatile freight shipping containers and transforming them into fully inhabitable homes.

An excellent method of reusing — there are more than 300 million shipping containers sitting empty at ports around the world — shipping containers are used to build full- and part-time single-family homes and much more. In their most basic form, recycled shipping containers offer a quick and inexpensive solution to emergency housing needs and when stacked sky-high, they make for intriguing dormitory complexes.

Below are eight particularly eye-catching recycled shipping container dwellings– — ranging from off-the-grid vacation retreats to beachside palaces to traditional-looking, three-bedroom family homes — that we wouldn’t mind coming home to (at least for a couple of nights).

Storage Containers: Home Sweet Home

Storage containers: They’re strong, durable and portable, stack easily and link together like Legos. About 25 million of these 20-by-40 feet multicolored boxes move through U.S. container ports a year, hauling children’s toys, flat-screen TVs, computers, car parts, sneakers and sweaters.

But so much travel takes its toll, and after about eight years, the containers wear out and are retired. That’s when architects and designers, especially those with a “green” bent, step in to turn these cast-off boxes into student housing in Amsterdam artists’ studios, emergency shelters, health clinics.

Despite an oft-reported glut of unused cargo containers lying idle around U.S. ports and ship yards — estimates have ranged from 700,000 to 2 million — the Intermodal Steel Building Units and Container Homes Association puts the number closer to 12,000, including what’s sold on the internet.

An Architect in Seattle, which has built cottages and office buildings from containers for close to a decade, coined the term “cargotecture” to describe this method of building. The Co-founder warns that although containers can be bought for as little as $2,500, they shouldn’t be seen as a low-cost solution to the housing crisis. ”Ninety-five percent of the cost still remains.”

The Cargotecture House, Seattle: Home Sweet Container

Built and designed by an Architecture in Seattle as a Magazine "Idea House 2011", this 192-square-foot solar-powered backyard container cottage is not even half the size of a New York City studio apartment.

Still, it manages to pack in a galley kitchen and micro bathroom with a ceiling-mounted showerhead – the floor’s redwood slats hide a drain – and can sleep up to four (a bed unfolds from the wall, a couch converts, another bed can be added). But given the close quarters, it’s probably best if everyone’s related.

If your interested in a container for a project like this or something similar, contact AZ Containers at 877-292-6937 to see how the most basic steel box to a customized, climate controlled storage or workspace with windows, they’ll have your solution on it’s way to you fast.

We aim to provide our customers with a personal, fast and efficient service, which will offer a hassle free solution to any storage problem. More importantly, there are no hidden costs when purchasing or leasing storage containers from us.

The Storage Container House, Nederland, Colo.: Still ‘Cargotecture’

True, the Storage Container House is not all shipping containers, but by definition it’s still cargotecture. The two containers that sandwich the main living area house an office and a bedroom in this 1,500-square-foot mountain home. Designed by Studio H in Boulder, Colo., for “a conscientious client who believes in living small and recycling,” the solar-powered house can operate entirely off-grid.

Cinco Camp, Brewster County, Texas: Light on the Land

Five freestanding cargo containers lined up and cinched together on a 3,000-acre ranch in the rugged, rocky high desert mountains of West Texas reduce life to its basics: One container holds a living room; two house bedrooms and bathrooms; another a kitchen and eating area, while the last is for storage.

Minimal modification was the goal here. ”It was more about the arrangement of the boxes. Most architects see those containers, and they want to manipulate them too much and cut them all up,” quoting the architect, who designed Cinco Camp for a former NY art director who’d grown sick of the Hamptons.

Stripped of their paint and topped with large roof canopies for shade, each box sits off the ground on short stilts. “There’s rattlesnakes, scorpions, spiders, all kinds of bugs,” says the architect. “We made a conscious effort to get it off the ground.”

Weirdly enough, a major east-west railroad runs through this middle-of-nowhere terrain three to five times a day, its long, distant cars loaded with shipping containers, a regular reminder from where this home came.

Aprisa Mexican Cuisine, Portland, Ore.: A Movable Taqueria

Having had two restaurants fail on him, Kirk Lance vowed if he ever opened another he’d have to be able to pick it up and move it if it started to backslide.

As he drove down the interstate in Oregon, where Lance had moved and had his eco-conscience raised, he noticed “giant yards … with hundreds, possibly thousands” of shipping containers stacked up and suddenly saw his next restaurant. He bought one of these cargo holders, for about $3,000.

“It was the culmination of sustainability and recycling and portability all coming together,” Lance says.

Turning the retired cargo vessel into a taqueria wasn’t that hard, says Lance. Cutting out windows, spraying in the foam insulation, “anybody with a little construction background can probably figure those things out,” he says.

But getting the permits, the blueprints, the structural engineering reports through the state of Oregon took four years, and added “a ton” to the cost, Lance says. ”What kept me going was if I could build one of these things and it works well, I could just copy the blueprints and build 100 of them,” or pick up and move.

“This shipping container has traveled all over the world,” says Lance. “It’s shipped tons of who knows what, and for me it’s kind of intriguing that it gets to have a second life.”

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