Swimming pools, houses, offices — you can make almost any structure out of these mega-sized receptacles. But is this design trend really practical?
For those of us who make a point to sort through our recyclables, we worry about the little things: yogurt containers, cereal boxes and egg cartons. But how do you approach recycling when the trash in question is larger than an elephant? Shipping containers, the primary means of protecting and housing consumer goods during long oceanic voyages, each have lifespans of only ten years. A combination of direct sunlight, salty water and rough handling ensures that these cargo containers won't be active for very long. Worse, it's sometimes cheaper to retire containers prematurely than to ship them back to their country of origin. The result is the growth of shipping container graveyards, where the seemingly innocuous containers form lego-like stacks of orange, blue and green towers. Over the past decade, designers, architects, students and tinkerers have viewed these defunct, mammoth-sized receptacles as an opportunity for architectural experimentation. They've been converted into swimming pools, houses and office spaces. In fact, shipping container architecture, or "cargotecture," has become an increasingly popular trend. "Shipping container architecture gets a lot of encouraging coverage in the design world as a trendy green alternative to traditional building materials," writes Brian Pagnotta for ArchDaily. "There are copious benefits to the so-called shipping container architecture model. A few of these advantages include: strength, durability, availability, and cost." The change in cost over the years is quite drastic; a new container in 1970 cost $5000, while today, many models are available for only $900.
Is shipping container architecture just a fad or a valid experiment in recycling? Would you pack up your bags and move into a piece of cargotecture?