Residential Shipping Container Primer (RSCP™)

For its holiday pop-up, Illy used a piece of functional art to preview a new espresso-making system at the Time Warner Center. According to the folks at the Italian coffee company Illycaffè, they are as serious about art and sustainability as they are about coffee. And that's part of the reason behind the Push Button House, the pop-up promotion-cum-arts installation at the Time Warner Center.

The Push Button House, is a shipping container that opens up into an entire house.  The structure is operated with a hydraulic system, that transforms from a rectangular shipping container to a full apartment at the touch of a button. the open structure contains six rooms spread across the container’s floor and walls. On one wall there is a double bed and bathroom complete with a full size bathtub. in the middle, there is a kitchenette and dinning table complete with a chandelier overhead.

Thinking inside of the box may become the newest trend for creative thinkers thanks to this new 12-unit office and studio building called the Box Office.

A striking example of shipping container architecture, Platoon Kunsthalle serves as an exciting and inspiring new exhibit hall and art center in Seoul, Korea. Built from standard shipping containers by Graft Lab Architects, the Kunsthalle, provides a gorgeous modern space where new ideas thrive and creativity is let loose. The building opened last April and houses art studio space, exhibit areas, a restaurant and bar, as well as lots of open space to gather.

In 2005 terrace restaurant Wijn of Water (Wine or Water) in the Lloyd-quarter in Rotterdam opened its doors. The restaurant is a composition with sea-containers. The building is temporary, this or next year the restaurant will be housed in the Sint Jobsveem warehouse, 250 meters away. Because of this temporaryness, there was a limited budget. The restaurant was brought up from scratch to completion in just half a year. The principal himself took care of the construction.

Functioning somewhere between the style of a summer street fair (common in the city) and a fully operating retail venue, the Uniqlo container stores were located in nine choice New York neighborhoods, including the West Village, Jones Beach, Cobble Hill Brooklyn, Coney Island. Each had vertical strip windows cut into the exterior and was powered by an external generator. The door and ramp opened and closed via hydraulic struts and the insides were lined inside with laminated cubes for shelves.

Freitag started to make tarp-bags in 1993, inspired from a view onto the transit-bridge. In 2006 they decided to sell bags-made-from-tarps in a shop-made-from-containers. Completely built from 17 rusty, recycled freight-containers, selected in person in Hamburg and brought to Zurich by rail. Stacked low enough not to violate the city’s restriction on high-rise, high enough to send shivers down anyone’s spine.

Twenty-four shipping containers are retrofitted and transformed into PUMA CITY, a transportable retail and event building that is traveling around the world along with the 70-foot long Puma sailing boat – il Mostro - during the one-year long 2008 Volvo Ocean Race, started in Alicante, Spain in October 2008.

The "Bed by Night" campaign for Hanover's street kids was launched in 1996. The now completed emergency shelter consisting of clapped-out sea containers stands in a small park next to a former bunker. It proved possible to re-use the existing containers, which were repaired and integrated in a new two-story complex, together with additional modules. A timber frame with a flat roof and skylights was erected as a free-standing structure to enclose the nineteen containers.

Located in South Melbourne, Australia, and designed by Phooey Architects, is the green Children’s Activity Centre at Skinners Playground.  This piece of shipping container architecture is made of four cargo shipping containers.  The environment is a familiar one: micro-landscapes, sheds and objects that are somewhere between toy and assault course. Color is everywhere, in equal strengths and volumes so that no single color dominates, and the compound is still shrill when the kids are absent.