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All Photos/exterior/building type : shipping container

Exterior Shipping Container Design Photos and Ideas

Small front patios connect the houses to their environment.
Franceschi Container Houses are three independent living units totaling 2,260-square-feet, built from used, 40-foot high cargo containers placed side by side.
Bharathi Research Station (Antarctica) Resembling a space station from a vintage ‘60s sci-fi film, this incredible creation by Germany’s BOF Architects inhabits another extreme environment, a coastal hillside on the bottom of the globe. Built to house researchers from India, this structure is easily removable to lessen environmental impact. Photo by BOF Architects
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 exposed wooden stairwell creates a warm contrast with the concrete and metal used elsewhere.
La Aduana is an eight-unit apartment building in León, Mexico, made from 36 shipping containers.
This modern prefab shipping container home in Germany was designed by Cologne-based studio LHVH Architekten.
Floor-to-ceiling windows front each unit, with sections of container wall folded out and fixed in place as part of the shading strategy.
The eight container apartments, huddled together in a wise use of the space, are situated on an old used car lot in downtown Phoenix. A decommissioned container costs between $1,800 and $5,000, says architect Wesley James. Transportation, handling, and site assembly run at least as much.
Logically named the ContainHotel after its structural components, this small, mobile, and environmentally-conscious hotel offers an alternative escape for modern travelers looking to push the boundaries of traditional accommodations. Designed by Prague-based architects Artikul Architects, the shipping container hotel is intended to be easily constructed in various locations. Currently situated along a surf campsite in the Czech Republic, the hotel was designed to be self-sufficient and eco-friendly, while providing comfortable lodging accommodations that are connected to nature. Formed from three shipping containers, the structure includes a horizontal 40-foot-tall container that hovers on top of two perpendicularly placed, 20-foot-tall containers, which rest on railroad sleepers—allowing for a minimal impact on the natural landscape. Overall, it includes five rooms that can fit a total of 13 guests, plus shared outdoor terraces for guests to enjoy.
Architect: Karen Mar, YAMAMAR Design, Location: Manton, California
On a tree-lined street in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, a former carriage house from the 1930s is now a colorful modern home that boasts bright orange shipping containers. Commissioned by an artist, a gallerist, and their daughter, LOT-EK was tasked with renovating and expanding their existing two-story home. The new design rotates around an extension made out of stacked shipping containers, and features vibrant colors and a centralized-floor plan. As a result, the architecture is now organized around a polychromatic core volume that extends from the ground floor to the roof terrace.
Hill’s 1962 orange Mercury Monterey complements the blue of the container, whose original opening was retained on one end as the entrance to the garden storage shed.
The containers’ sides and ends were removed to make way for large, aluminum-framed clerestory windows that provide sweeping views of the east and west.
Solar panels mounted on a shipping container onsite (not pictured) heat this curvy house in Tasmania. The swooping roof cantilevered over the west-facing desk mitigates the intense afternoon sun.
The containers are fused side-by-side, giving each apartment a 16-foot width. They are then stacked in four pairs with wrought, industrial-style exterior staircases in-between. To spare living space and installation headaches, a cinder block core houses utilities and a bathroom for each unit.
The apartments face a landscaped common courtyard. The site is an irregular trapezoid, a fact the zig-zagging sidewalks reflect well.
Stevens’s office is inside a refrigerated shipping container, which he bought used for about $1,300.
The sleek 320-square-foot MEKA home, designed by Jason Halter and Christos Marcopoulous, when it was set up in New York. The home is made of cedar paneling, set over a steel shipping container.
OPA wanted to free themselves from logic imposed by a grid and considered various inefficient configurations of shipping containers. They settled on a combination of options, seen in the trikselion shape here. The Presidio, San Francisco, California. Mobile exhibition pavilion for the For-Site Foundation. © Tim Griffith.
The home was built by two construction workers and the couple themselves, who were familiarized with the construction process and had backgrounds in industrial engineering. “We did not have blueprints for this design, and created only a 3-D model to guile them along the way,” Saxe says.
Two converted shipping containers (left) now house offices for Shoup’s design/build firm. “Perhaps the most successful aspect of turning this into a place to live and an office rather than just have this shop space was moving it towards real indoor-outdoor living,” he says. Taya Shoup, a landscape designer, has refined her husband’s vision for the property with a courtyard and plantings. Photo by building Lab inc.
The 800-square-foot house is among the first shipping container residences in San Diego County, according to Mike. He hopes it will soon by joined by a larger container home on the property, at which point it will become the guesthouse.
The architect and his team devised an armature on the back of the container that will eventually be covered with vines, concealing the AC and heating unit, the reservoir for graywater and the composting toilet outlet.
Located on the roof of the historic Gilsey House in Manhattan’s NoMad district, this renovated penthouse has an expansive sliding glass door that retracts into the zinc facade, opening up the master suite to a garden terrace with restored historic handrails.
Photography: Danny Bright
This beautifully designed container home with incredible backdrop was built from a mixture of 20 ft shipping container and 40 ft shipping container by architect Narongdej Nilapat.
The recycled shipping containers were sourced from the Pacific Port of Caldera in Costa Rica. “Discarded shipping containers are all over the world and cost relatively little,” Saxe says. “With a bit of creativity and understanding of local building techniques, the interiors can be modified for any client.”
The firepole is an extra amenity the client always wanted to include in his home.
One of the main draws of Kevin Freeman and Jen Feldmann’s house is its connection to the neighborhood, which is why the front porch was a must. “Homes that have a door but no outside space say, ‘I’m not interested in you,’” designer Christopher Robertson explains. “This says, ‘I’m here to be part of the community.’”
Freeman and Feldmann's two dogs, Arnold and Ruti (short for Rutabaga), have claimed their territory as the space between the ground and the bottom of the 20-foot-long container that houses the kitchen. "The dogs like to go under there, because it's a two-foot-high space that is shaded and gets a nice breeze," Feldmann says. "When we were landscaping, we had to make sure to leave a path for the puppies so they could get to that spot."
Alongside the redwood shade screen, which keeps the house from overheating, Freeman and Feldmann grow vegetables in an 18-inch-wide garden but frequently bike to nearby eateries for the local Mexican cuisine.
The Qiyun Mountain Camp is an extreme sports and adventure park that sits on a 60-acre property in China. LOT-EK designed the public facilities and services within the park, which includes a 15,000-square-foot restaurant plaza that overlooks a river..
Qiyun Mountain Camp Market in Huangshan, China
Bohen Foundation
Apap Open School in Anyang, Korea
PUMA City
C-Home
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