Have you ever considered living in a shipping container? You may now after seeing these shipping container homes.

According to the US Census, the median home price in the US in 2010 was $221,000, but for many locations (and that doesn’t include New York City or Southern California), most of that cost is tied up in the dwelling and not the land. In an effort to have a smaller environmental footprint and to greatly reduce the price of their home, some are turning to building their own homes from repurposed shipping containers. Yes, you read that correctly. Some clever creative types are using shipping containers to create some truly stunning shipping container homes. Homes that you and I would be lucky enough to live in!

The average shipping container costs just around $2,000. You could build shipping container mansion for the average price of a ranch style home.

Don’t believe me, take a look at some of these stunning shipping container homes.

Image: Maison IDEKIT

Maison IDEKIT Quebec Container Home –  Architect Bernard Morin and wife Joyce Labelle built this stunning home in Quebec using seven recycled shipping containers. They started a new company called Maison Idekit with the idea of building shipping container homes for others.

De Maria Design Redondo Beach House – This beach house was built from eight shipping containers and with some traditional building materials. The architects tout this design as being both affordable and indestructible and have used the experience to create a new product line of prefab shipping container homes called Logical Homes.

Saxe Containers of Hope Home – Architect Benjamin Garcia Saxe turned two shipping containers into this open and airy home for only $40,000. It’s a luxury home without the luxury budget.

Container Guest House –  This guest house was built by Texas architect Jim Poteet from a shipping container for his San Antonio clients. It features a deck, a green roof and floor to ceiling windows.

Meka Hela 1280 – Meka uses repurposed shipping container frames and other materials to create prefab modular homes that range in price from $29,000 – $215,000 depending on the size and features. The Hela 1280 is the top of their line.

Resources

http://www.census.gov/const/uspriceann.pdf

http://www.viralnova.com/shipping-container-homes/

Related on EcoSalon

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Top Image: Saxe Containers of Hope Home

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Big box shopping gets a new spin.

Shopping malls usually have a similar vibe: the same big-brand stores, a large and badly-lit floorspace, mediocre fast-food choices and an overall lack of street-cred.

The recently opened BoxPark Shoreditch, named for the East London neighborhood where it is located, is notably lacking in all these elements. Director Roger Wade says his creation is the world’s first “pop-up mall” and is intended to serve as a seamless addition to the community where it now sits, at least for a while.

BoxPark’s clean and minimalist design aesthetic along with free WiFi and spacious outdoor patio seating attracts a young and artistic crowd, owing to Shoreditch’s reputation as the center of the UK’s digital economy and as a hub for creative individuals. Tired of the fact that nearly every high street in the UK offered the same retailers, Wade was keen to give independent brands a platform in East London.

“We like to see the rebirth of independents in the UK market because we believe that’s the rebirth of creativity,” Wade says. “If we destroy our independent base then we’re destroying an important part of the creative community of the UK – the high street will have nothing to look at anymore.”

Unlike the gargantuan Westfield shopping center development in East London’s Olympic city – which is Europe’s largest urban shopping mall – BoxPark went from “tip-site to shopping mall” in just under 12 months and is designed to have a far less permanent impact.

Built on top of railway sleepers using re-purposed shipping containers, BoxPark will occupy its current location for 5 years, though some of the stores and brands present will undoubtedly change within that period. In addition, 90 percent of BoxPark’s materials and components can be reused for another project or location, leaving the land unchanged once the structure is removed.

Offering affordable rents and flexible leases lasting from 1 to 5 years, Wade says BoxPark uses a very different business model than most shopping centers.

“We don’t look at financial strengths or the size of their business, we just look at the strength of their brands,” Wade says. “What that allows smaller brands to do is dip their toe in the water and see if retail is for them because many of them have never retailed before.”

The tenants of the roughly 50 tiny units are a mixture of independent brands, cafes, restaurants, and off-shoots of larger brands, such as FiftyFiveDSL and Puma. The Levi’s Commuter Range, which offers clothing designed specifically for urban cyclists, has opened a temporary bike shop in addition to their clothing store while a Nike iD design studio offers a space where customers can design their own custom kicks. In addition to a wide variety of street-wear brands, Amnesty International has a floorspace as well as Farah Vintage and a Phaidon bookseller.

The emerging trend of pop-ups in urban centers like London has been aided by the recession, as vacant land and empty storefronts leave landlords eager to fill space, even if it’s just with a short-term tenant. But Wade, who spent 20 years running his own brand and working in street fashion, says tough economic times are not where the original idea of a pop-up shop came from.

“Brands like Adidas in the early stages had pop up stores in places like Carnaby Street and they were only there for a few days, offered limited edition products and had a thousand kids lined up,” Wade says. “That one message is a consumer driven message – it’s quite pure.”

Wade, who has worked with popular streetwear brands such as Carhartt and G-Star, says he’s always felt more comfortable in a street wear environment rather than a designer one, which is what inspired the vibe of BoxPark.

“I’ve never wanted to be a victim of elitism,” Wade says. “I felt like when get a lot of designer brands it’s all about making an elitist statement and doing that is quite easy: you charge a lot of money, you act quite aloof and you’re very selective about who you sell to. I just believe that all people are equal and that we should make fashion accessible to everybody and that we should let the products do the talking.”

Images: BoxPark Shoreditch

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Ceramic household containers remind us of where so many of our products come from.

For someone who does most of her writing online, using a keyboard, I have an awful lot of pens. And even though I rarely use them, they always end up all over the place. This is part of the reason why I was thrilled to come across these Cargo Containers by California-based designer Daniel Ballou. There’s also something thought-provoking, even haunting, about scaling down such an industrial item — from 8 feet to 8 inches —and rendering it in a more precious material.

Ballou lives and works in Long Beach, CA, which inspired the design of these pieces.

“I live and work next to one of the busiest shipping ports in the country,” says Ballou. “Cargo containers are everywhere, stacked up on ships just outside the breakwater and piled up in huge lots inside the port. Visually, the repetition of the stacked containers is impressive. It’s massive and utilitarian but has a lego quality, and the random color patterns somehow always look great together. The idea of ceramic household containers with the same form seemed like a great contrast with the brutal and industrial real thing. This is the first project I’ve done in ceramic, but the material felt right since it’s warm and imperfect.”

Beyond a play on form and scale, the use of shipping containers also serve as a reminder of where it all comes from, and makes us think twice about the stuff we think we need.

Ballou says: “Shipping containers can be a symbol for some cultural questions about consumerism and globalism, which I think is partly why they are gaining so much popularity in architecture. Besides simply having fun with the contrast, the containers are a reminder of where virtually all of our products come from. Most likely whatever you put in the container has been in a cargo container before.”

Daniel Ballou’s containers are available through Areaware. They’re $24 for a set of two — either blue and white or gray and orange.

Images: Daniel Ballou; splorp

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Next time you’re planning a bash and thinking about ordering in, maybe go all the way and order all of it in – like all of it. Yo! Go nuts and party hard in a recycled shipping container!

Boxman Studios is custom-fabricating these steel pains in the ass, and outfitting them with seating for 26, a double-sided bar, solar-powered electrical hookups and 500-square-feet of covered space. They “deliver” anywhere and claim to be able to set ’em up and break ’em down in about 20 minutes.

They even come with a cool tag line: “It’s Crossed Great Oceans and Traversed Massive Continents. It Can Handle Your Next Event.”

More fun specs: A 20′ x 25′ bamboo floor area, space for dancing, an open gullwing awning that spreads out the entire operation, “couch seating” (parties must have couches, no?) for 20 and space for six at the bar. The solar sitch is four 120-volt outlets to power TVs, a dj booth, extra lighting, refrigerators and whatever else you want to plug in.

According to Boxman’s blog, the operation started when owner David Campbell was reading about recycled shipping containers being used as sustainable housing alternatives and came up with the idea of “mobile hospitality venues.” Business acumen aside, the idea does indeed show some good enviro-citizenship: It takes 4,000 kW-hours of energy to melt a 20′ shipping container for use as steel beams. It takes only about five percent of that (200 kW-hours) to fabricate a Boxman Studios venue. Add those solar power capabilities and you have your green party in a box.

Check it out at Gizmodo.

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