container-life

Facundo Newbury is an artist and sculptor who plans on creating a shipping container home in the Dominican Republic made entirely from old shipping containers and things abandoned in Brooklyn.  Facundo is part of the Trust Art Project which is trying to gain funding for 10 New York artists as part of an art stock market initiative.  You can invest in any of the projects on the site and then, when they are auctioned off, the money from the sales will be used to pay back the stock holders, with any profits split 50/50 between the stock holders and the artists. There is another article about the project here.

Dwellbox have finished there first ISBU home and have just laid the first containers of their second shipping container residence.  You can follow the construction progress on their blog.  The designs for this new house look great.

 I'll keep you posted on the progress. You can read more about their first home here.

41 Berangan, a hotel in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, have added two "courtyard rooms" made from 20' shipping containers.  The budget rooms form a courtyard and come with air conditioning, internet and bathrooms.  Apparently the hotel also makes its own beds from recycled pallets.

Tempo Housing, famous for their Keetwonen shipping container student housing, have made a small scale development in Amsterdam. Skaeve Huse is made from six 40' shipping containers.  They were designed as affordable housing for people with special needs or a history of psychiatric illness.

There are some more pictures on Flickr.

Debbie Glassberg has hired architects BNIM to help her construct the first shipping container based house in Kansas City. The 2,600 square foot house has cost $300,000 to build.  One of the interesting features of the house is the use of a couple of custom 12' tall containers to make the structure feel more open.

There is an article from the Kansas City Star with lots more information about Debbie and her house here.  Also Debbie has a Flickr site here with lots of photos of the construction process.

Jennifer Siegal, founder of Office of Mobile Design (O-MD), has designed this amazing shipping container based house in downtown LA. Each of the containers used in the design has its own use.  One is a dining area, one an office, one a bathroom and laundry area, another the master bedroom.  As with other houses designed by Jennifer one of the aims was to blur the boundaries between inside and outside.  

There is an interesting interview with Jennifer here.  

"You're very interested in prefab homes and construction. What are the advantages of that style of construction?

Well, there are three advantages, which are the issues that play out in every building. There's always this issue of design or style, the issue of cost, and the issue of time. And what's exciting about factory-built or prefabricated systems is that all three of those become possible -- better design, less time, less money. And that's really the holy trinity in the design world."

After last week's post about Cordell House I received an email from John Walker at Numan Development who tells me they are currently working on another shipping container project, this time based around a single container.  It should be finished in May and we hope to have some pictures and more information for you then.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of one of their earlier ISBU buildings, the Apama Mackay Gallery.

The American Institute of Architects has just announced their 2009 housing awards and amongst the winners of the One/Two Family Custom Housing category is Cinco Camp, by Rhotenberry Wellen Architects, in a remote part of West Texas.

26 miles from the nearest town, Cinco Camp was designed to be a retreat that could be quickly and easily constructed with minimal environmental impact.

A distant rail line is one of the few man-made intrusions into the vast, pristine landscape. Occasional passing trains are typically loaded with shipping containers, providing a subtle yet intermittently obvious contextual reference for the use of containers as a primary building component of the compound.

The panel who chose this project for the award felt there was a 21st century Stonehenge quality to it.

More pictures and plans in the full post.

Peter Beard of Landroom has created a container based solution for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) at their Rainham Marshes site outside of London.  The complex consists of a large double container classroom, a hide and a composting toilet facility as well as basic office and storage facilities.

There is a wonderfully written article in bd magazine which is well worth reading if you are a container lover.

Indeed!

Numan Development with architect Christopher Robertson of Robertson Design have created a beautiful shipping container house in Houston, Texas.

There is a set of photos on the developer's site detailing the construction progress here.