Shipping Container Living = Cool + Cheap

Did you know that shipping containers are very useful for living in as a house?  They can withstand earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and all sorts of disasters.  They are cheap and readily available all over the world.  Here are some great examples of what you can do with a shipping container:

The video below shows a very cool weekend retreat created by a couple of architects as an educational tool.


The next video shows a time lapse view of constructing a house of a more typical size out of shipping containers.  It didn't take long!


Next is a short clip showing how shipping containers are used for student housing in Amsterdam. 


Finally, this last video is somewhat long, but it shows all the possibilities of shipping container living that have already proven successful. 

Living Small in the City

We've looked at tiny houses for the past few days, and they are wonderful.  However, in the interest of urban density, which is needed to preserve habitat and drastically lower carbon emissions, which is paramount to reigning in climate change, let's move on to what a "tiny house" would look like in the city.  These apartments are too big by some standards to qualify as tiny per se, but, at 590 square feet, they are still quite modest.  I like that the architects Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores have designed this building around the concept of community, with the understanding that social interaction is a key ingredient in our happiness.  I also like that all of the apartments have balconies for the residents to enjoy outside space.  It's nice that there is a courtyard with plants and a fountain, because this will create a wind-free, moderate micro-climate from which people can benefit, even if it's just by opening a window.  It's nice, too, that a "low rent" community gets to live somewhere so beautiful.  This looks like some of the high scale luxury apartment complexes I've seen, yet it's a reasonable and low-impact place to live.