Could this catch on?
Cattani Architects have designed the recently completed CitÊ A Docks student housing project, located in Le Havre, France. It consists of 100 apartments made out of old shipping containers:
To ensure maximum heat and sound insulation, the walls of the container adjacent to the outside and those that divide the different units have been coated with fire walls in reinforced concrete 40cm wide, and come within layers of rubber to dampen vibrations.
The external facade is designed by the combination of the old âboxesâ that has kept the undulating, repainted in metallic gray. Inside, the designers chose white walls and wooden furniture. Each studio has a bathroom, kitchen and free Wifi.
Click on photos for full-size.
I live in one of those right now…in beautiful Kabul Afghanistan. The military has been using them for years.
There was a place in my college town that was using a vaguely similar concept. Take mobile homes and stack them up on concrete frames. Didn’t work out too well but lasted for decades somehow.
http://nowwhataretheydoing.blogspot.com/2008/12/if-you-lived-in-mankato-mn-area-in-70s.html gives you an idea of what it looked like.
If I was 20 again and in college, those might be pretty groovy.
Better than some of the places I’ve lived….
Hm, it’s probably right for the target audience. But, I have to say, the artist got too firm a hold on the concept . . . no shipping company would ever stack containers that sloppily đ
http://demariadesign.com/1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52&Itemid=27
Check out some good-looking container designs…
The military has been using them for years.
If you stack them correctly and with some kevlar wall paper, they’d even provide ballistic protection from small arms fire and small mortor rounds.
Sounds like a good idea for a survival compound development.
“Apocalypse Estates”
Here’s one of the pioneers of recycling shipping containers as housing.
http://www.containercity.com/
Well, it could be worse…Have you ever heard of “capsule” homes in Japan?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/business/global/02capsule.html
Each link is its own treasure trove of container-living.
Thank you everyone for contributing!
Agree with most everyone else. Like the concept and the forward looking design. But, probably a little too prison like for someone beyond recent college graduate.
Not necessarily. With Container City, they remove part of the walls between containers to create proper living spaces.
Interesting info about Japan’s capsule hotels. I never imagined them as squatter hotels.
If you want really high end – HGTV did a show on a container home in Maine.
http://www.hgtv.com/home-improvement/iextreme-livingi-homes-that-stand-way-outside-the-mainstream/pictures/page-20.html
It was a really nice house. I could live there.
I would love to live in there or in my own little Container.
I saw this Container building in Berlin some month ago.
http://www.twotimestwentyfeet.com/p/hilfiger_w2011
Container buildings are a fascinating part of modern architecture. Maybe even of future Architecture.
in particular in times of “green movement”