The Home Crowd

For everyone who’s seen pictures of cargo ships and thought to themselves “Geez, I sure wish I could live in one of those shipping containers!”, well you’re in luck.  Developers are looking to build a seven-story condo project built from these containers in Salt Lake City.  “City Center Lofts” as it’s called, looks to take advantage of the sustainable qualities (i.e. recycling/re-use) of these used shipping containers which can cost 1000-3000 dollars each.

But “Lofts”, really?  We officially throw that word around too much.  When I see that giant steel shoebox with barn doors on one end, I don’t really think “Wow, that could be a great LOFT!”  ….. Maybe “Compartment”.  But then again, I guess we’re chunking at least 50K off each unit price when the project is called “City Center Compartments”.

I am however, intrigued by this idea.  The idea of using shipping containers as housing has been around for a long time, but hasn’t been much more than fixtures at travelling art installations.  Seeing this materialize may shape many views on sustainability.  The designer, Adam Kalkin, has built shipping container homes previously, but this project seems to have the largest scope of any of his listed works.

“Residential design using shipping containers. . .is still a novel approach anywhere in the country,” says Elizabeth Mitchell, director of the Utah chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “You’re re-using all the energy and raw materials that went into creating the shipping container rather than using new materials - it’s an element of sustainable design. But the architects who get into this are mostly intrigued, I think, by the aesthetic challenge of taking something industrial in appearance and transforming it into a place someone would want to call home.”

(From the Salt Lake Tribune via Grassroots Modern)

And here’s the link to the project page - City Center Lofts

Upsides     - Sustainability (Saving the world)/Being Hip, Trendy, and Modern

Downsides - You live in a storage container/The container is in Salt Lake City

And, you never know, it could spur a whole new surge in mobile homes..

photo credit: Spatial Mongrel