At the end of a long day’s exploring of the city of your choice, there’s nothing nicer than having a glass of vino, ringing loved ones, running a hot bath and then bedding down for the night….in a shipping container.

Well, that’s what Travelodge would have us believe. Their new eight-storey hotel in the Uxbridge area of west London has been built from 86 modified shipping containers. Furthermore, they’ve officially expressed their intention to build half of their hotels planned for the future in this manner.

Shipping container architecture isn’t entirely novel – for example, look at the offices of the Freitag brothers in Zurich, or Gregory Colbert’s Nomadic Museum -  but it’s certainly unusual, and the buildings always have a very distinctive look. The Uxbridge Travelodge hotel will offer rooms for the price of $35-$40 per night, which suggests overwhelming opulence isn’t the order of the day, but it’s certainly an admirably green piece of lateral thinking.

Image: rolu dsgn