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A friend of mine started a music festival in the bush a few years ago with a few buddies and is now looking at setting up cheap accommodation for campers who don't have or can't be bothered with the whole tent/caravan thing. He told me about some massive concrete pipes that you could convert into weekend sleepers for peeps - probably similar to the lockers at train stations that I've heard about in Japan.
I was thinking about this and had this mad thought about building and living in a shipping container complex. Knowing that this is a good forum for sharing concepts with other crazy people I thought I'd put it out there for some more ideas.
My idea is simple: get some land near a beach and get 8 shipping containers and build a luxury home - it could look something like this:
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Here's another weekender type:
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I'd probably even build a shipping pallet walkway through the bush to my home:
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Are there any building/design type people here who have any other ideas on simple housing ideas?
definitely not a crazy idea.
do a bit of google searching for shipping container architecture or modular architecture.
there is a company on the sunshine coast in qld that does shipping container recording studios.
i've done a few competition type designs before for lightweight/modular briefs and looked at doing a shipping container studio as well.
the high cubes are the ones to use. once you build up a floor and ceiling you loose some height.
access is something to look at. can you get the containers in there? all of the luxury beach type projects i've been involved with ended up being stick frame or portal shed.
there are some seriously good architects in qld who have done their take on the modular idea.
happyhaus.com.au/index.html
Take shelter? When I saw the movie, all I could think of was Petermac33.
(1m14sec) he uses at container as a shelter.
I wonder if there is a business idea in this - could be bigger than air swimmers.
Here's a pic of the capsuals in Tokyo
I reckon if you mod a shipping container you could get at least 18 of these in them - do em all up fancy with insulation, soft lighting, fm radios and crap, soft pillows, nice blankets. Hire em out to festivals for a bomb, who in turn rent them out to drunks for $200 per night - you do the maths. At the end of the festival you'd put everything through an industrial cleaner and spray it with a few tins of mortein and detol ready for the next festival.
Of course you'd have all sorts of draconian rules you'd apply: take the drunks credit card on entry and make them sign a massive form they can't possibly read - no smoking/spewing/drinking/staining/noise/one person per capsual/etc or incur $500+ cleaning fees etc.
already being utilized in the pilbara for FIFO village accommodation - theres a flasho looking one next to the cappy road house just out of Newman, one in Hedland that has probably been finished by now and a few seacontainer SPQ's at sino in the weld range which I think have been moved now as they're so easy logistics wise & the camp is in care & maintainence.
We are/were looking at building this as our next home in Mandurah...
Not to sure of other states regulations...but we have approval to build this at our new block....it's just when you go double storey, you need proper structural engendering with stairs and such...
Great for short term accommodation....I am just not so sure now that it is for us...
as I don't feel like I want to live the rest of my life surrounded by metal...
So I think we might have gone from a great cheap container concept home to a stone built home ...just because I feel the vibe from the home will be better
But yes great accommodation and a bullet proof idea for camping low end or high end as you can make them what you want.
I've spent a fair bit of time researching shipping containers as homes, and yes, it's not a new idea. I used shipping containers to meet a brief during my diploma studies (<$200k beach cafe), from concept to working drawings.
Some colleagues take the p!ss out of me because of my infatuation in using containers for my next home, just need to work up the coin & find a block.
From a 'prefab' point of view, it makes a lot of sense - controlled fit-out in an already structural building, windows & doors (depending on size) can be cut out without additional structural work, transportable by road/rail/ocean etc. and by configuring the containers in specific locations, you can arrive at a good design.
I mainly saw it as a 'green' method of building by recycling used containers, but have since found a fair bit of debate due to the toxins in the paint, steel manufacture energy use, transport fuel etc. that make a good argument. That said, I believe that prefabs will be the preferred building method in the 'not-so-distant-future (controlled quality, no time loss due to weather, minimal time on-site).
Check out the following (yank) website, plenty of container-homes/projects & the home site also has some great innovative information on 'green' building practices.
www.jetsongreen.com/design/container-design
A guy I used to crew for in Darwin who built a donga with 2 shipping containers and a large open area in the middle. In the dry season, the middle area was the main living area and when the wet season came, he would just pack everything into the containers, and nick off over to Indo in his yacht!
It was an extremely functional and practical set up.
Con job, this is Australia guys lots of room blah blah blah.
Now lets see here, what else have we been conned with as far as domestic buildings last 10-15 years, Oh I remember the old 1000 meter square block that you could put your house on, a shed and a back yard for the tin lids to play in.
Now down to 350 squares
jammed in so you hear next door noise like they are living on top of you, no room for kids to play safely, all fostered onto the unsuspecting purchasing public with a media campaign and lobby groups hungry for a quid.
Who on here would put up good coin for a house like those mooted, and which bank would lend for same.....
Why stop with houses?
Christchurch used sea containers to create a whole shopping mall after the big earthquake last year.http://www.springwise.com/retail/temporary-shipping-container-mall-stimulate-economic-recovery-christchurch/
I teach in a high school where half of the classrooms are made with three containers attached (air conditionned/etc..)
We were not allowed to build (flooding risk) so we went for the modular system. (doesn't need a permit)
Reece plumbing pamphlet has the picture of the austrian hotel where u sleep inside old concrete sewer main pipes
@ sailhack - sounds good, have been toying with it in the back of my mind for a while now also. maybe not the next house but one day i really would like to give it a go.
@ mineral - you raise an interesting point. i think the small block issue is not just the fault of land size. everyone seems to want the biggest house they can build. i think it's more the Mc Mansion that's the problem.
how about somehting a little more suited to sub tropical climates.
this type of structure you design to be modular and fit inside a shipping container as a flat pack
Adolf , that is a great idea I think it's a winner !!!!!! The possibilitys are endless .
Forget the rust buckets .
Go the precast concrete!!!!
Small is the key here. That's what keeps the costs down.
I worked with an Architect who designed a home with massive Concrete Humes Culverts.
This is the concept.... Double Decker Box Culverts...http://banjarinfo.com/tunnel-house-double-decker-culvert-box-house-by-shinichi-ogawa-associates/
Still costs a lot to finish it off properly though. Let alone a decent block of land... $$$
i'm not discounting the idea that blocks are getting smaller but reality is that houses are getting bigger. the problem with hearing your neighbours is a design issue. typical house blocks don't have a yard because the houses are built to setback. unfortunately it's part of the australian culture. not one that i subscribe to.
www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/bydesign/trends-australian-houses-getting-bigger/2997406
www.abc.net.au/news/2010-03-05/houses-getting-bigger-while-families-get-smaller/351822
me and some mates lived in a 20' container down at jindabine year ago [1989?} for the first year snowboarding - we decked it out with anything we found on rubbish piles and pallets out the front to keep the dirt out - best of all was we stuck a pot belly stove in it - though sleeping at night we kept the door ajar and the potbelly raging before sleep we always woke early once it burnt out .
diner was usually at the bowling club smorscaboard, one of us would but dinner and the 3 os us would pig out off the one plate. far ouyt it seems like last week.
A great blog all about alternative ways to live & house oneself.
Any ancient ones among you remember The Whole Earth Catalogue....it was like the internet before there even was an internet 
lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/
