Container architecture is a way of up-cycling one of the waste products of international shipping. Over 7 million shipping containers enter U.S. ports each year, and only 2 million leave. A reflection of imbalanced international trade, the result is an excess of containers, dotting the landscape across the country. In the spirit of resourcefulness, however, that is changing as shipping containers are becoming inexpensive or less-expensive green alternatives to standard construction.

Group 41, a San Francisco architecture firm, is currently offering their design services to landowners willing to undertake stylish, modern container projects on their property. “Group 41 will provide schematic and design development services at no cost. The firm will oversee the remainder of the project through construction documents, permitting/bidding, and construction phases charging at cost for all services rendered. However, architect Joel Karr, will continue to donate his time free of charge throughout the duration of the project.”

That amounts to up to $10,000 in donated design services for your container project. Karr, an architect with an impressive design portfolio, should have quite a few clients sign up. Shipping containers are the perfect modular building blocks, essentially a prefabricated structure, that is ISO (International Standardization Organization) standardized in 20 and 40 foot lengths and made to stack. They are 8 feet wide and have 8.5 foot ceilings.

Containers already have industrial gauge wood floors and are made of corrugated steel that can be insulated with a thin ceramic layer. Containers can be stacked for high, 17 foot, ceilings, or lofts. Walls can be removed (while structural integrity is maintained), doors, windows, and skylights added. Tiered stacks can create balconies, overhangs and other design features.

The newest in green building, container projects are being used worldwide for everything from youth hostels, to custom beach homes, emergency shelters, solutions to inadequate housing, and state of the art live/work complexes. There are enough excess shipping containers to circle the globe twice. Already manufactured, very little energy is expended in building a container home because the structure is already built.

Construction costs are cut in half for custom designed homes making a green dream home affordable to a whole new sector of society. Care can be taken to maximize energy efficiency, light, passive heating and cooling, water cycling, and the geographic features of the land. In the words of Group 41 the “sky is the limit” with versatile, modular, pre-built, custom green building units.

Up-cycling is when the functional value of the reuse is greater than the functional value of the original product. In the case of shipping containers, the value of a living space is greater than that of an often discarded temporary storage space.