By Melinda Fulmer, MSN Real Estate
Shipping containers, those big metal boxes used to transport the lamps, washing machines and furniture in our houses, are now becoming homes in their own right.
The 40-foot-long and 8-foot-wide containers left empty at ports around the country are being recycled into stylish, eco-friendly housing that's less costly than traditional construction.
The evolution
Initially developed as an experiment for art installations, emergency housing and vacation homes for wealthy modernists, cargo container housing is moving off the fringe and into the mainstream.
"People have begun to think of it as viable instead of weird," says New York architect and artist Adam Kalkin, who began building homes with containers in 2000.
Kalkin and a handful of other architects and builders have begun using the corrugated steel boxes for everything from high-rise apartment homes and coffee shops to senior residences and even luxurious suburban homes.
Indeed, Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based architect Peter DeMaria has launched a home building firm, Logical Homes, that will offer nine different models of container homes on lots around Southern California, an area where he has several other projects built or underway.
From the outside, the Logical Homes models, which range from 640 to 3,520 square feet, appear to be mid-century tract homes, their large corrugated boxes covered with special finishes or "skins" and enhanced with custom paint and large windows.
On the inside, they have bamboo floors and energy-efficient appliances. Insulation is provided by recycled denim; an optional ceramic paint helps form a greater sound barrier against the outside world.
Click here to view "Shipping-container homes make the leap from weird to viable."
The price tag for all this eco-chic? DeMaria's homes average around $150 to $200 per square foot, compared with about $220 to $250 for much of the traditional building in the area.
Generally, architects say, container homes are about 20% cheaper to build than those made with traditional construction, ranging from $87 a square foot for the most basic container home to about $200, depending on location and finishes.
Thinking inside the box
DeMaria and other architects have embraced the idea of shipping containers largely because of their price. With a surplus of hundreds of thousands of containers sitting vacant on U.S. docks due to the imbalance in trade, used containers sell for $1,000 to $2,500, depending on their size and condition, DeMaria says.
With lumber and steel prices rising, these building blocks are a bargain, and with their 9 1/2-foot height, they have just enough of a clearance to serve as actual rooms, rather than glorified storage sheds.
They also have the advantage of being easier to assemble on site than traditional framed construction. That can speed up the building process on an apartment building by as much as 40%, says David Cross, founder of SG Blocks, a St. Louis container retrofitting firm.
And they are exceptionally sturdy, a selling point in hurricane-riddled Florida and earthquake-prone California. "It's a heavy-gauge, steel-frame house," Cross says.
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