Cargo containers, a staple of international trade, are now gaining mainstream popularity as building blocks for affordable homes in a variety of sizes and types.
“When we built our first container home about eight years ago in upstate New York, the locals all laughed and said, ‘What in the world is that?'” says Tim Steele, founder of Steele House, a New York company that designs and builds container structures.
“Now we tend to get a building permit in about a week. In the past 10 years, they’ve become pretty mainstream as homes” he adds.
John Nafziger and Sarah Strauss, co-founders of the Brooklyn, New York-based architecture and design firm Bigprototype, which has worked with Steele on some container-home projects, say inquiries about designing homes using shipping containers are way up in the past couple years. He calls the homes “great eye candy on the block. It’s recycled material, and for people interested in being environmentally conscious, it’s a very attractive idea.”
Though the containers can sell for as little as a few hundred dollars each, Strauss points out that many people underestimate the cost of retrofitting a shipping container for use as a home. Other challenges include the fact that, as with a cardboard box, punching out sections of the container weakens its structure, so windows and doors must be carefully planned and adequately reinforced.
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Source: The Hamitton Spectator, 2 November 2017