Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Shipping containers change housing market

According to MSNBC... old, no-longer-used 40' shipping containers are now leaving ports and showing up in new housing developments around the country:

In a shaky real-estate market, this could be a solid investment – literally. The steel boxes are functional, durable and cheaper than traditional housing.

Or maybe we could use some containers to build a new pool structure! Click thru here for a sense of what's possible... then imagine stacking them two or three high on "the north side" of the pool and one container (no stacking) on the south side. Then we put a south-facing roof on the containers... put some solar thermal equipment up there to heat the water... put offices in the ground level containers and "viewing boxes" in the second and third level containers...

Ok, ok... I know it sounds crazy... but if we're going to have a virtually open-ended RFI ... I mean... RFP... then why not include an option for an environmentally-friendly structure? Besides... a bunch of containers may not look any worse than The White Elephant.

Tim White

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This idea is new only to us in the US. These containers have been used for years in Asian countries for housing. In Honk Kong, Singapore, Malaysia the containers are brought in to construction sites, stacked up and used as housing and cooking kitchens. The labor lives on site in these containers for the duration of the construction project.