Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Trend Alert: Living in a Cargo Container

I think of myself as the a modernist. I shop at Ikea, I drive a Mini Cooper and a Vespa scooter and I like pop art from Warhol to Close. While I love living in Brooklyn, my 1905 brownstone apartment never quite fit my personality. The doors are a little slanted the windows don't close all the way and the floor creaks like a 100 year old floor should. But moderists like smooth lines and sharp angles, which are hard to find in an old building.

A few years back I came across a magazine targeted at people like myself called Dwell and it featured a new style home called the Prefab. Now this isn't the Prefab Sears homes from the 1920's. They are cargo containers stacked, cut apart and reassembled into homes. Yes, you heard me right. The same TEU containers that are "homes" for lettuce shipping from China can now be your home with a little added flair.

The beauty of these prefabs is that they are cheap. A 2000 sq ft home could run in the area of $75,000, which leaves plenty extra to spend on a nice piece of land along the ocean. The one I am eyeing up is designed in Austria and can be assembled by a team of 10 in three weeks. They are highly customizable and a lot of fun to look at. Talk about taking your work home with you.

3 comments:

Kelly T. Smith said...

I know of an Oakland artists collective which is comprised of cargo containers, stacked two three maybe even four high, functioning as individual studios within an industrial warehouse.

Unknown said...

I would like to find an engineer that would design a roof over 2 45 foot containers with a 30 foot span in the middle of them and a 2 foot overhang on each side, making the total roof (with a 3/12 or 4/12 pitch)50 feet wide, and approx. 50 feet long. Open rafters inside so we could have a hay truck drive through and deliver (about 12feet high in center. The containers would be used for tool shed, storage, etc. Do you know anyone who could design this for us in Maricopa county AZ?

Christopher Sciacca said...

Hmmm. Go to your local Barnes & Noble and pick up a copy of Dwell magazine. I bet you can find someone in it that can do this for you.