Growing populations, growing real estate cost, growing cities. Everything in our life seems to be growing bigger, denser, gaudier, and glitzier. Between mile-high condominiums, mile-long highways, and increasingly wasteful living spaces, it’s no surprise that many people are embarking on a search for alternative dwellings that allow them to live close to the city centres they love, while still feeling like a good denizens of Starship Earth. In recent years, hipsters and the unhip alike are experimenting with different ways to try and cut down on our mounting garbage and waste problem while also creating affordable and visually pleasing living spaces. The solution? Container homes. Your parents might have warned you that if you didn’t study you’d wind up living in a box…. But this probably isn’t how they meant it.
In an era of free trade and global commerce, ironworkers and factories churn out brand new shipping containers on a daily basis. From their humble origins, they make shocking worldwide voyages: they might spend a week mounted to a railcar as a locomotive hauls them to the other end of a continent, then spend another month at sea, stacked aboard the deck of a heavy freighter. To withstand the harsh conditions in their globetrotting travels, container homes must be tough, durable, and willing to take a few dents- all factors that make them ideal building material. Container homes first appeared in the middle of the 2000s, and after spending several decades on the sidelines of architecture they’re quickly growing in both size and prominence. Why container homes?
For one thing, container homes offer a degree of modularity and flexibility unlike anything else in their price range. If you’re planning on building a home from scratch, than you can go wild with customization options and ideas. In many ways, container homes are like Lego for adults: not only are they easy to move around, but they’re also stackable and relatively modular. you can make a compact one-box bungalow on the end of a suburban street, or a five-box mega mansion, or anything in between. Shipping containers are always moving in and out of service as their working warranties expire: rather than consigning their fateful crates, many companies have set up direct routes to allow construction companies, renovation contractors, and interested homeowners to get a head start on container homes.
