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7 Coolest Recycled Shipping Container Homes, Offices & Buildings

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When it comes to functionality and sturdiness, nothing comes close to shipping containers. But who’d have thought they could make smart and cool space to live and work in? These great big metal boxes don’t just ship every imaginable product between ports around the world, (and often get washed off in the process) they also provide a cheap, ready made architectural base for a huge variety of uses. They won’t fit in every city, but in some settings they look awesome. Here are seven of the best!

12 Container House
Far from being purely functional, some of these houses look great, are cheap and would be a cool place to live. Huge warehouse size living space wouldn’t work in a cold climate, but the small narrow boxes would make fantastic and adaptable office, bedroom space. If you need a bit more space, you can just ship another few boxes in.

Seatrain Container Homes
An industrial inspired house is one thing but here the storage containers make up the rooms of the house; you hardly notice the metal boxes amongst the modernist design, clean lines, and huge glass windows.

Espace Mobile
These houses based in the Austrian countryside only cost around $87,500 and for that price you get a simple, elegant and retro design. It may look a little out of place, but it’s cheap and cheerful. It’s all made up for you, and shipping it would be simple. It’s a house that comes with a warranty, but floor to ceiling windows should keep you distracted for long enough to live in a shipping container in the long run with no complaints.

Freitag Shop
This shipping container shop is another project situated in Europe. The messenger bag shop can be found in Zurich’s industrial quarter, rather appropriately. And this isn’t just a market stall hidden inside a metal box, as you can see these containers are stacked up, hitting 85 feet high. The company continue the ethos of the goods they are selling, using recyclable material to create a retail space that you’d have to have a look around in. Stacking them so high may be overkill, but we love it.

Tempohousing Amsterdam
These boxes were intended to only be a temporary solution to a student accommodation problem in Holland, but shipping containers provide an effective solution to low-cost student housing. We can only imagine that these containers can be simply shipped, and I wouldn’t blame students for trying to buy a couple after they graduate and make a cheap housing from the sturdy materials.

Pallotta Teamworks
Perhaps the smartest and most practical of all of our designs, shipping containers make perfect stackable office space for this warehouse in a design by Clive Wilkinson for a U.S. charity event company. The idea is cheap, simple, maneuverable and by stacking the containers vertically, they use what space is available in the most efficient way.

The Nomadic Museum
Yes, shipping containers can be art too. Or at least they can provide the walls for a huge warehouse providing outdoor art space. The 45,000 square foot space is both mobile and made out of almost entirely recycled materials. Purpose built for one event, Shigeru Ban, the Mozart of the sustainable building world, created something that was intended to be a cold, exposed building, but he also tried and succeeded to create a welcoming and open space.