For years, I have driven past empty shopping malls, abandoned theaters, and other unused commercial buildings, and have thoughts race through my head of what I could do with them. One of my favorite recurring notions (perhaps overly romanticized), is to build out a brewpub in an old theater, retaining much of the old vaudeville charm while serving up tasty pints of ale.
Lars Fisk & his Shipping Container Home
While they’re not buildings, I’ve also driven past stacks and stacks of empty shipping containers in places like the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in New Jersey. Because of the imbalance of trade with countries like China, the US frequently has nothing to export back to our trading partners, and there ends up being millions of these empty containers all over the US. The question in my head: “What the heck can you do with these things?”
Recently, for some really progressive entrepreneurs and designers, the answer has been, ironically enough, to turn them into buildings and live in them. It’s a great idea, as they are cheap, sturdy, and prevalent. They are the perfect thing to upcycle!
Prominent artist Lars Fisk lives in a five-container home he built himself in Queens, and Architect Adam Kalkin has developed a number of housing designs from shipping containers that range from the modest to the extremely comfortable. And a British firm called Urban Space Management has developed a concept of modular living via shipping containers called Container City.
Indeed, these are all very cool, but my favorite upcycled shipping container housing is by a company called PFNC Global Communities, based out of El Paso, Texas. “PFNC” stands for "Por Fin Nuestra Casa." Translated from Spanish this means "Finally, a home of our own." PFNC takes all of those extra shipping containers and converts them into a homes with modern amenities. The best part? Each one costs under $15,000. Sure, they are not as
PFNC Home
fancy as some of the ones listed above, but they could potentially play a major role in solving one the major challenges in the developing world: to provide a safe and secure place to lay your head at night. And since these homes are fully portable, this makes it easier to extend credit and offer home ownership to people who otherwise would not have not been eligible for a loan. If someone defaults, you can simply reclaim the home.
PFNC has targeted the Mexican market first, but it has global aspirations. This is awesome, since housing for the world’s poorest is a massive challenge.
PFNC home inside
Hipcycle has targeted significantly more modest upcycling efforts, but we applaud the efforts of these designers and builders to do amazing things with shipping containers.
Pretty neat, huh? What do you think?
