container-life

Husband and wife team Bernard Morin and Joyce Labelle of Maison Idekit Home have built the first shipping container home in Quebec.  The modernist home is built up the side of a hill in St Adele, Northwest of Montreal, using 7 containers.  

The containers are covered with 12 cm (5 inches) of urethane insulation and wooden cladding.  The interiors of the containers have been left with bare metal walls giving a stylish industrial feel. The 280 square metre (3,000 square feet) house cost just $175,000 to build and the couple are already planning two more projects as well as offering buisiness in a box solutions.  

Their 3 container chalets are on offer for as little as C$45,000. You can read more about the house here.

An Australian family survived the large bush fires in February thanks to to a home built fire bunker made from a 20 ft shipping container.  The Container was buried, with a brick wall and door at one end for entry and an air vent in the roof.  Bevan Gobbett took refuge in the bunker for six hours with his wife and six year old daughter as the fire raged outside.  You can read more about it here.

Todd, from North Texas, is building himself an incredible 2,500 square foot house from eight 40 foot shipping containers.  I came across Todd's blog a couple of weeks back and asked him some questions about the house and his rationale for using containers.

"I wanted to replace the old house on the property here with something different. Since it was only about sixty years old and falling apart, I wanted to build something that would last a long time. At first I looked into concrete construction but it was expensive and would be covered up with conventional wall finishes. I had seen a few container homes on the internet and thought this was something I could do myself."

I also asked Todd what the most difficult part of the construction process had been so far.

 "The most difficult part is dealing with used shipping containers. They don't always line up like they do on paper. The floors are not the same height. And when set side by side the outside walls don't always touch at the top. A few shims usually lines them up. I have a feeling that the difficult part will be the inside walls and floors. I had considered pouring a concrete floor over the existing container floor. After I found on your website that some people have been doing that. I'm much more confident about doing it now."

Todd has also built a garage/apartment, this time not with ISBU's.

Section 8 is an open air bar in the Laneways area of Melbourne.  The bar, kitchen and DJ area are are housed in a shipping container.  The bar also features tables and chairs made from old wooden pallets. The bar was conceived and designed by architects/designers DireTribe.

The bar may not be in the current location for long though.  One of the beauties of basing the bar around a shipping container is that the owners can move the bar somewhere more interesting when they tire of the current location.

The Artery is another shipping container art gallery, this time in Costa Mesa, California.  An add-on to The Lab alternative shopping centre, the Artery offers a space for young local artists to exhibit their works.

Architects Fulton and Salomon in Australia designed and created their Small is Smart house to prove that living in a shipping container can be stylish, luxurious and green.  Their put down anywhere house is designed to work off grid with solar panels, a composting toilet and hydroponic green vegetable wall.

They plan a range of models from super cheap starter home that you can build yourself from a kit to fully constructed luxury home.  They also plan a version that you load your car into, ship off to the other side of the World and then use as your holiday home.  Their new website should be live soon but you can already find lots of info and pictures on their current site.

More pictures below.

Brad  Tomacek of Studio H:T in Boulder, Colorado has designed this beautiful house based on two shipping containers for client, Andrew McMullin.

The house is designed to be completely off grid with solar panels for electricity, passive cooling and a wood pellet stove for heating. McMullin wanted the home to be kept to a modest size for the sake of conserving resources and sustainability. The house will also feature a green roof.

There is an article about the house in the Denver Post and you can find more information on the project on the Studio H:T website.

We'll be keeping an eye out for progress on this project.  More pictures below.

Agson Engineering create a range of shipping container buildings from hotels to student dorms and housing for mine workers.  Their most famous project is probably the 120 bed Travel Lodge hotel in London made from 86 containers of various sizes.

On their website they have a simple layout tool for customers planning their own container structures.  It is very simple to use and is useful for getting a sense of scale and finding out what will, or won't work in your own container designs. Click here to try your own design.

Wes Christensen and Greg Gorby of Cargo Modern have just started construction on an interesting studio project made from a single 40' Hi Cube container cut into two sections.  

It's always nice to see a project move from the drawing board or SketchUp to reality and we'll be keeping an eye on this project to see how it goes. You can see more plans on their Flickr site.

Containers2Clinics (C2C) is a charitable organisation that plans to turn old shipping containers into mobile fully equipped clinics.They can then be shipped to countries that lack adequate healthcare facilities.  Elizabeth Sheehan, the Executive Director of C2C, recently announced a partnership with Anshen & Allen, an international architecture firm focused on the healthcare and research industries.  C2C is planning to have their first clinics deployed in Central America in early 2010.  If you would like to make a donation then please click here and contact C2C directly.