September 21, 2006

  • Shipping Containers

    I've been interested in shipping container architecture for a while. I've often wanted to build structures out of these giant lego blocks/units of currency of globalization.

    I'm not alone, either. Quite a few specialty firms have grown up around the idea. You can get a pretty shi-shi house made out of containers. It's rather fashionable among designers to come up with uses for these things, beyond the obvious use for shipping.

    I'm familiar with a company in Zurich called Frietag, and their gimmick is that they make messenger bags and wallets and stuff like that out of recycled shipping tarps, the kind used on semi-truck trailers. And they just opened a new store in Zurich, built out of shipping containers.

    This got me thinking about how I'd design a similar structure for use as a house, which meant I had to learn the standard dimensions. Which lead me to a web site called export911.com, which has to be the most unfortunately-named website in the world. But the point here is this:

    The page that tells you the standard size for shipping containers has a quote from the Buddha scrolling across the bottom: "All we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become." I'm not sure that's a real quote from the Buddha, but it's not a bad string of words. Especially in the context of learning that there are fork lift pockets in the 10' and 20' containers. But not the fourty-footers. Nosiree.

    Update: Shipping container homes on CNN.

Comments (3)

  • You can get old house trailers nobody wants for hauling them off and they're already designed to live in.

  • Container City is pretty sweet. I love this idea. Re-use at its best. I'm so tired of Americans who tear down the "old" discount store to build the "new" Wal-Mart - how stupid is that? I'd sure like to live in a project this interesting, and with this low a "carbon footprint."

  • back in my harmonica-playing days in New Orleans, I recorded a demo with a guy whose home studio was in a shipping container... was a pretty sweet setup :)

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