Shipping Container Homes

The 404 is a new boutique hotel and restaurant in Nashville’s rapidly changing Gulch neighborhood. Housed in a former auto shop next to the legendary Station Inn music venue, the small space stands in stark contrast to the new, large developments that have recently sprung up. The restaurant in front is partially housed in a shipping container that both extends the entry up to the sidewalk and acts as a visual focal point on an otherwise subdued exterior. Photo by Caroline Allison.

The look of the BetaBox was a collaboration between Nicholas Sailer, BetaVersity's director of creative, who studied industrial design at the College of Design in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Michael Hobgood, an architectural designer and the company's director of operations.

A cherry red game room gives way to a second green space on the roof, which can be used as an extension of the indoor space.

Tsai Design Studio turned a shipping container into a classroom located just outside of Cape Town, South Africa.

For an adaptive reuse project in Toronto, Levitt Goodman Architects used a shipping container as a visitors' center.

Shipping containers are the building blocks of this residence tucked away in the redwood forests of Santa Cruz, California.

This three-bedroom home in Lille, France, is made up of eight stacked containers.

The interior is warmed by parquet flooring and Finium wood panels.

Little Box on the Prairie is a 700-square-foot house made from two recycled shipping containers. It’s situated on 10-acres of rolling prairie, just north of Livingston Montana, and blends rustic coziness with clean, modern design. Many of the finishes, such as the redwood flooring and plywood wall panels, were salvaged off-site, recycled, and reused. The outside deck is perfect for chatting over morning coffee, enjoying an evening glass of wine, or gazing at the Absaroka Mountains while deer or antelope pass by. The house comfortably sleeps two, and a third can sleep on the sofa if needed.

The hobby room features a custom desk and shelving system that Atelier Riri designed and manufactured themselves. A custom frame holds the family’s tools and other objects on the eastern wall.

Texas architect Jim Poteet helped Stacey Hill, who lives in a San Antonio artists’ community, wrangle an empty steel shipping container into a playhouse, a garden retreat, and a guesthouse for visiting artists. The container measures a narrow and long 8 by 40 feet; Hill asked that a portion of the square footage be retained as a garden shed and the rest serve as the living space.

The exposed wooden stairwell creates a warm contrast with the concrete and metal used elsewhere.

Their solution was to stack two shipping containers on top of each other, to create private space within the open-plan living area.

“The owners wanted it to look like a shipping yard that someone had made a restaurant around, in the same way that local artists in the River Arts District have repurposed factory spaces into art studios,” said Project Architect Myles Alexander. The three-story structure lets in light from the highest level, where the bottoms of the containers were removed.

Each MEKA home arrives via truck nearly complete. From there, it can be built in a matter of days.

Finished in 2013, the 3,660-square-foot Casa Incubo was built from stacking and sliding four shipping containers to create a residence and gallery for photographer Sergio Pucci (who took all the photos of his new home). Set on flat ground, the two-story structure ended up being much easier for architect Maria Jose Trejos to complete than a typically constructed home, saving roughly 20 percent of the cost of a standard concrete block design.

The BetaBox mobile prototyping lab is outfitted with a 3D printer, a CNC mill, a laser cutter, and other tools for innovating.

The roof of this residence was made from scraps taken from the sides of the shipping containers. Its slanted design creates a wind tower effect that provides natural ventilation and negates the need for air-conditioning.

This modular home prototype by Meka is a shipping container clad in cedar.

Transforming shipping containers into habitable spaces is a growingly popular subset of prefab. Just off the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, Martha Moseley and Bill Mathesius adapted an unused concrete foundation to create a home made from 11 stacked shipping containers. "We were inspired by the site, and our desire to have something cool and different," says Moseley.