Refocus Notes:  Avant garde or stunningly pathetic?

You be the judge, but do look at the chief destination of the containers in this story~Detroit~ Need we say more?

Ya gotta’ love the mainstream media’s take on this new ‘paradigm’–it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread…..[pathetic]

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By Karin Halperin | ABC News

The first U.S. multi-family condo built of used shipping containers is slated to break ground in Detroit early next year.

Strong, durable and portable, shipping containers stack easily and link together like Legos. About 25 million of these 20-by-40 feet multicolored boxes move through U.S. container ports a year, hauling children’s toys, flat-screen TVs, computers, car parts, sneakers and sweaters.

But so much travel takes its toll, and eventually the containers wear out and are retired. That’s when architects and designers, especially those with a “green” bent, step in to turn these cast-off boxes into student housing in Amsterdam, artists’ studios, emergency shelters, health clinics, office buildings.

Despite an oft-reported glut of unused cargo containers lying idle around U.S. ports and ship yards - estimates have ranged from 700,000 to 2 million - the Intermodal Steel Building Units and Container Homes Association puts the number closer to 12,000, including what’s sold on Craigslist and eBay.

HyBrid Architecture in Seattle, which has built cottages and office buildings from containers for close to a decade, coined the term ” cargotecture” to describe this method of building. Co-founder Joel Egan warns that although containers can be bought for as little as $2,500, they shouldn’t be seen as a low-cost housing solution. “Ninety-five percent of the cost still remains,” he says.

Here’s a few recent North American projects - including the new condo project - where the shipping container takes center stage:

Exceptional Green Living on Rosa Parks, Detroit: Container to Condo

This 20-unit, four-story condo complex consisting of 93 stacked cargo containers - the first U.S. multi-family residence to be built from these discarded vessels - has been in the works for four years. Tabled when the national real estate market shattered, the project is now scheduled to break ground early next year in midtown Detroit. The units will come rigged with ductless heating and air systems, tankless water heaters and other energy-saving systems. “We’re putting money into these energy efficiencies so that the tenant has reduced energy costs,” says Leslie Horn, CEO of Three Squared, the project’s developer. “And we can build in less than half the time.”

The Sunset Cargotecture House, Seattle: Home Sweet Container

Image Credit: Photo by Thomas J. Story, Sunset Publishing Corp.

Built and designed by HyBrid Architecture as the Sunset magazine Idea House 2011, this 192-square-foot solar-powered backyard container cottage is not even half the size of a New York City studio apartment.

Still, it manages to pack in a galley kitchen and micro bathroom with a ceiling-mounted showerhead - the floor’s redwood slats hide a drain - and can sleep up to four (a bed unfolds from the wall, a couch converts, another bed can be added). But given the close quarters, it’s probably best if everyone’s related.

Cinco Camp, Brewster County, Texas: Light on the Land

Image Credit: Hester + Hardaway

Five freestanding cargo containers lined up and cinched together on a 3,000-acre ranch in the rugged, rocky high desert mountains of West Texas reduce life to its basics: One container holds a living room; two house bedrooms and bathrooms; another a kitchen and eating area, while the last is for storage.

Minimal modification was the goal here. “It was more about the arrangement of the boxes. Most architects see those containers, and they want to manipulate them too much and cut them all up,” says Mark Wellen, who designed Cinco Camp for Roger Black, a former Rolling Stone and New York Times art director who’d grown sick of the Hamptons.

Stripped of their paint and topped with large roof canopies for shade, each box sits off the ground on short stilts. “There’s rattlesnakes, scorpions, spiders, all kinds of bugs,” says Wellen. “We made a conscious effort to get it off the ground.”

Weirdly enough, a major east-west railroad runs through this middle-of-nowhere terrain three to five times a day, its long, distant cars loaded with shipping containers, a regular reminder from where this home came.

The Box Office, Providence, R.I.: Lego Land

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