Top 10 Cool Uses for Shipping Containers

Do not adjust your computer screens, in this week’s article we will examine the unnatural phenomena of cool uses for shipping containers. It’s not just all work and no play here at SourceJuice!

1. Restaurants/Cafe - I’ll bet you’ve all seen the red UK style buses converted into quaint hamburger joints, but never a shipping container turned into ritzy New York contemporary cafe.

2. MythBusters- these guys have found countless uses for shipping containers including explosion/blast bunkers, catapults, Evil Knievel style launch ramps - you name it.

Myth Busters

3. Datacenters

Sun Blackbox

Blackbox pic 2

Technology is my first love. Sun Microsystem’s “Project Blackbox” is a prototype of the world’s first datacenter built into a shipping container and optimized to deliver extreme energy, space, and performance efficiencies to locations as diverse as deserts, disaster zones or even Mars. A complete datacenter ready to ship anywhere, just drop it on site and add power and connectivity and you’re up and running!

4. Art & Oragami

Oragami

The newly completed Nestle Chocolate Museum in Mexico City, designed by Rojkind Arquitectos, resembles an origami shipping container of sorts and serves as a public space where visitors can learn about and witness the production of Nestle chocolate. The most incredible fun fact about this structure is that it was completed in 2.5 months from start to finish, including design and construction.

Art

5. Houses & Living [high end/luxury]

Zigloo - Lux Housing

Zigloo Residential Design has some great concepts for the luxury home market, coming to a town near you.

6. Other Housing

12 container housing.

7. Museums

Exterior Museum

Inside Museum

The Nomadic Museum is the name given to a temporary structure composed of 156 shipping containers, housing the Ashes and Snow photography exhibit of Gregory Colbert.

Gregory Colbert originally conceived of the idea for a sustainable traveling museum in 1999. He envisioned a structure that could easily be assembled in ports of call around the world, providing a transitory environment for his work on its global journey.

8. Septic Tanks - eeewwww…Check out the patent, nuff said.

Shipping Container Septic 1

Shipping Container Septic Diagram

9. Rocket Launcher

Rocket Launcher

*Just Kidding*

10. Container Cities

Container City

Urban Space Management’s Container City projects in London and elsewhere in the UK. As one of the designers in this video explains, the containers are initially manufactured to such precise specifications, that they only vary from each other a couple millimeters. Thus, they are comparatively much simpler to assemble and deal with than traditional building materials.

Check out more on shipping container architecture on Wikipedia.

Dylan Blankenship signature
dylan@sourcejuice.com // Dylan Blankenship

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Comments

3 Responses to “Top 10 Cool Uses for Shipping Containers”

The Humanaught on January 29th, 2008 12:49 am

That’s fantastic. A couple additions:
1. above ground swimming pool.
2. world’s largest lego
dylan on February 2nd, 2008 9:14 pm

Hah, I love it - I’ll have to add a part 2 now!

-Dylan
Mike on May 30th, 2008 9:47 am

You may be interested in the Ace modular building units which can be used as a standalone unit or component of a larger structure. It is compact for transportation and storage, easily assembled/dissassembled with hand tools on site, and can be configured (both interior space and exterior windows/doors) for many applications. Go to http://www.aceamericas.com