Recycled and Up-Cycled: A Conversion of Shipping Container Homes

The move toward recycled and renewable materials has made its way to homes in Australia. The houses here have traditionally been built with brick and mortar, but these days, clients are asking for different materials from their contractors. They are demanding resources that are in line with their environmental and sustainable views. And it seems that the best option so far is a simple shipping container.

A conversion involves a process of taking an already existing product and transforming it so that it can be recycled into another purpose. This isn't just about taking something and dressing it up. This is about transforming the way the public sees a resource and turning into a profitable and realistic alternative for a different life.

A New Kind of Home

Shipping containers have been around for decades, but it's only recently that people began to look at them with new eyes. They have begun to see how this languishing container can be up-cycled and renewed into something of beauty and substance. The up-cycled and modified containers are transformed into tiny homes, little sheds, modern houses and even multi-storey mansions.

It's not too far a stretch to see how this link between the industrial and residential was made. Containers have been used as makeshift dwellings for a long time. Dock workers would use them as means of temporary rest during their off hours. Site managers would convert containers into offices for their purposes while on the yard. From there, the idea took off.

The Origins of the Container Home

Engineers and architects took the idea and ran with it, seeing the natural strength and tendency to be durable as excellent properties to be found in homes. They also loved how this took a discarded material and gave it a new purpose for decades to come.

After the work of container homes gained interest in the wider community, it began to make sense that this building material could be used as way to market to the green- conscious crowd. It could be sold as a sustainable material that didn't use up energy and saved tremendous costs on other sustainable building practices. And if that alone didn't sell it, the containers homes just looked cool.

To make a shipping container conversion is modified to be insulated from the elements, walls installed to separate the space, windows and doors cut into the frame, and even stacked together to form larger homes from multiple containers. From this basic beginning, the variety and permutations became endless. It's possible to find just about any home fabricated from the container; a floating home on a river, a reclusive cabin in the bush, or a standard home in the suburbs.

The future of shipping containers looks to only grow. More and more, the public will see the use and appeal of sustainable housing, and this will become a beacon that will attract even the most resolutely traditional minds. Container homes are set to stay.