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Not long ago, we raved about Cargotecture’s ingenius cargo dwellings. Last week, the NY Times wrote about another cargo master, Adam Khalkin, who unveiled his new Push Button House at this week’s Art Basel Miami Beach.

The Push Button house is a single cargo container with motorized doors that open at the push of a button to reveal a plush interior. Khalkin has also designed a 3-bedroom house with five cargo containers called the Quik House and a mini version called the A-Pod.

And while quite a few developers are now involved in using shipping containers as livable spaces it was HyBrid Seattle that coined the term Cargotecture to describe their special application of the medium.

The firm has what amounts to a ready made system of pre-designed applications for cargo containment living, but what’s unique is that many of them are offered as temporary solutions to currently unused urban space – or space not meeting the highest and best use.

One example is the 4over2 mixed-use system where 4 apartments lay over 2 retail spaces. It’s a modern, simple, understated mixed-use design that can be relocated to a new address in less than a week.

The Studio 320 container design is an aptly named 320 square foot studio space offering a great room that utilizes the bulk of the space and adds a separated bath and sleeping area. Clearly this is a limited use size application, but again the design can be stacked 2 or 3 high with included stairs. Multiply the square feet accordingly and you get a very typical sized urban apartment.

Still another design, The Urban Mini-Tower is 2240 square feet consisting of two 640 square feet studio apartments above a 960 square foot commercial space, plus the studios share a 640 square foot roof-top garden. If elected a Cargo Elevator is also an available option. This particular design was originally employed for an unused urban surface parking lot where it quickly turned the real estate into a productive use.

Having had two restaurants fail on him, Kirk Lance vowed if he ever opened another he'd have to be able to pick it up and move it if it started to backslide.

As he drove down the interstate in Oregon, where Lance had moved and had his eco-conscience raised, he noticed "giant yards … with hundreds, possibly thousands" of shipping containers stacked up and suddenly saw his next restaurant. He bought one of these cargo holders, for about $3,000.

"It was the culmination of sustainability and recycling and portability all coming together," Lance says. And then there's the romance of it: "This shipping container has traveled all over the world," says Lance. "It's shipped tons of who knows what, and for me it's kind of intriguing that it gets to have a second life."

Turning the retired cargo vessel into a taqueria wasn't that hard, says Lance. Cutting out windows, spraying in the foam insulation, "anybody with a little construction background can probably figure those things out," he says.

But getting the permits, the blueprints, the structural engineering reports through the state of Oregon took four years, and added "a ton" to the cost, Lance says. "What kept me going was if I could build one of these things and it works well, I could just copy the blueprints and build 100 of them," or pick up and move.

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:Keep planning on building one of these for down in old Kentuck, since the last cabin got burned down by what was surely a degenerate white trash meth-head hillbilly.

Turdacious wrote:

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:Keep planning on building one of these for down in old Kentuck, since the last cabin got burned down by what was surely a degenerate white trash meth-head hillbilly.

Hope you've learned not to rent it out to writers.

tough old man wrote:I've been on this site a lot.
http://www.cabinfever.us.com
and
http://www.weehouses.com

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:Keep planning on building one of these for down in old Kentuck, since the last cabin got burned down by what was surely a degenerate white trash meth-head hillbilly.

Hope you've learned not to rent it out to writers.

First the toilet was broken, and there were bits of teeth and blood EVERYWHERE, then the place was gone...nothing but ash and burned up nails and hinges.