Six of the best: Shipping Container redesigns

If these designs are anything to go by, the world needs more re-purposed shipping containers. Beyond the cool of ultra-modern container houses, portable homes, backyard studios and bars, are these hip, eco-friendly projects.

Creative Social Hub

Pop Brixton, UK

Image: Belinda Luksic

Part of South London’s transformation into a stylish enclave is this pop up—a sprawling three-level complex with herb garden, art gallery and a cool community of independent retailers, restaurants, street food and social enterprises. On weekends, it’s humming with live music and DJs, while the sun-lounge astro turf deck at the rear is the place to settle in for some live sport action on the big screen.

(popbrixton.org/)

Crossing Bridge

Ariel Sharon National Park, Israel

Image: messerarchitects.co.il

By the time it’s completed in 2020, this metropolitan park in Tel Aviv will be three times the size of New York’s Central Park and the biggest environmental rehabilitation project ever undertaken, providing a green lung to Israel’s coastal plains. It’s also an exercise in recycling, reusing and repurposing. The visitor centre is constructed entirely from recycled items, and includes a tyre and building material recycling plant as well as a 160-metre long bridge, constructed entirely from disused shipping containers, forming a gateway into the park.

(parksharon.co.il)

Shopping Mall

Boxpark, UK

Image: Boxpark

When it first sprang to life in London’s East End in 2011, this pop-up was the first of its kind, revolutionising the concept of a retail mall and street food market. These days, the two-storey stacked mall on Bethnal Green Road in Shoreditch is home to up-and-coming fashion and lifestyle designers, jewellers, homewares and food and drink outlets. It’s also the place to hang out, with a range of exhibitions, activities and live music events that range from beer pong to internationally renowned DJs.

(boxpark.co.uk/)

Freight Farms

Freight Farms, USA

Image: Freight Farms

Portable, stackable and economical, box farms are the way of the future—particularly in dense urban areas where space is an issue. Capable of growing up to an acre of food plants, the so-named Leafy Green Machine is a hydroponic, vertical growing system that’s app-enabled, making it simple to control the climate—and growing conditions—365 days a year from anywhere in the world.

(freightfarms.com/)

Wine Tasting Centre

Devils Corner Cellar Door, Tasmania

Image: Cumulus Studio

Crafted from dark metal and local timber, the cellar door at Hazards Vineyard, a Brown Brothers winery, is one of the more striking shipping container redesigns. Opened in late 2015 in Apslawn, there’s a lookout tower with commanding views across the vineyards to Moulting Lagoon and the stunning Freycinet Peninsula beyond. The view from the wine tasting deck isn’t too shabby either.

(devilscorner.com.au)

Pop-Up Accommodation

Snoozebox, Russia

Main image: Lambeth.network

This pop-up hotel is genius—a stackable shipping container hotel that can be assembled within 48 hours. It’s also solving the problem of accommodation shortages in host cities where major sporting events take place. Remarkably compact, the rooms sleep 2 to 4 people, with private shower and toilet, flat screen TV, safe and power sockets. There’s also WiFi. With appearances at the Olympics and Commonwealth Games under its belt, the Snoozebox will head to Russia in 2018 for the FIFA World Cup.

(snoozeboxhotel.co.uk/)