In the 1950s, Malcolm McLean developed a modular design that would simplify the loading and offloading of ships, boxing up goods for easier loading and unloading between trains, trucks and boats The standardization of cargo containers revolutionized the modern shipping industry. Today, though, an increasing number of the world’s 20,000,000+ containers are being adapted to new uses, transformed into homes and offices, schools, shops, stages and more.

Proponents of containerized architecture note that the units are generally inexpensive — for many shipping companies, it is easier to sell off unpacked modules than return them to points of origin. Containers are built to be robust and strong, resistant to weather and fire and able to convey heavy loads around the globe. They are also made to be stacked easily on top of one another, which can be useful in creating multistory cargotecture.

Aesthetically, painted metal containers evoke that ever-popular industrial look a lot of people seek out in converted factories with exposed materials. Container reuse can be sustainable, too, particularly when one considers the energy-intensive process of melting them down for recycling. Some container architecture projects take advantage of the mobile and modular nature of the cargo containers used to build them.

For those inclined toward do-it-yourself approaches, the proliferation of online guides offers a starting point to buying and building container homes. As more individuals and companies engage in creative reuses, standardized methods are evolving, too, for making modifications that meet building codes and streamlining processes like permitting and code compliance, together paving the way for future container-based projects.

Shipping container architecture, however, evokes strong reactions from skeptics as well. “The shipping container is to today’s avant-garde architecture what the pipe railing was to the early International Style,” writes design critic Theodore Grunewald, “an industrial objet trouvé; a totem fetishized more for its aesthetic qualities and poetic and symbolic associations than its practicality.” He cites Dr. Richard Williams, a professor of contemporary visual cultures, whose also has reservations: “They’re great for doing what they were designed to do, which is transporting stuff. A simple technology, they have helped facilitate global trade like no other. But they’re designed for things, not people. Dark, damp and airless, boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter, they’re hopeless living and working spaces.”

There is truth in these criticisms. Without significant modifications for controlling indoor climates, for instance, metal container shells make for poor insulators. In some cases, the answer is to more extensively retrofit them, though of course that adds time, cost and environmental impacts. It is worth keeping in mind that (like any design solution) containers will work (or not work) differently in different places. The standardization of containers and their ability to travel the world doesn’t mean that they provide equal architectural benefits around every port of call.

As with any material or building unit, there are going to be specific project, client and site needs and considerations. Individual containers come in standard sizes, which can be an advantage and a disadvantage depending on the desired program and layout requirements. The world is full of buildings made from unusual materials, including hay bales, tires, soda cans and beer bottles — availability and location play a role in where and how each of these works as well. In places where containers are cheap and the climate is ideal, adaptations can be easier and well worth doing.

A lot of container criticism is also aimed at more pie-in-the-sky ideas, like modular buildings with interchangeable parts. These more ambitious and concept-driven designs, including container skyscrapers and mobile city-to-city apartments, may or may not make it off the drawing board.

On the more practical side, though, ever more companies are evolving repeatable and modular solutions, including materials and methods of insulation, plumbing and electrical wiring specifically designed to work with container structures. Such solutions can make it easier to assemble and outfit cargotecture much more quickly than one might erect a non-prefab alternative. In construction, speed and prefabrication is helpful in reducing energy, time and labor inputs.

Meanwhile, municipal authorities and commercial construction firms recognizing these benefits continue to build large cargo container projects, including emergency shelters as well as group homes, community centers, industrial parks and office complexes. To an extent, the cycle is self-reinforcing as well: as more projects get completed, it becomes easier and more efficient for other container architects and DIY builders to start similar projects of their own.

The 20th-century American dream of suburban houses and picket fences unfolded in parallel with another vision: freedom to roam, embodied in camper vans and other mobile housing designs. The increasing costs of city living and desire to escape nine-to-five life has since led to a new generation of creative solutions, ranging from converted camper vans and buses to space-saving sleeping trailers that can be towed behind cars or even two-wheeled vehicles.

DIY & Professional Van Home Conversions

Many mobile living creations of this new millennium are actually adaptations of existing vehicles, including do-it-yourself van rehabs as well as professional remodels.

Some are cheap, simple and use recycled materials while others feature more luxurious amenities and higher levels of finish — as with most things, you get what you pay for, whether in dollars or sweat equity.

The more modest exterior appearances of some such livable vans can be deceiving – many stealth campers and DIY RVs include solar-paneled roofs, custom wood trim, flip-down window covers and even flip-up computer desks designed for digital nomads. Many of these features can be all but invisible from the outside.

Livable City & School Buses Transformations

Wanderers requiring more room for extravehicular activities may require something bigger but presumably still street legal, making buses a natural option for larger-scale mobile makeovers. A city bus has its advantages, including expansive windows for those seeking extra sunlight.

Meanwhile, plain old yellow school buses offer benefits as well, including more standardized design elements to work with. These can be turned into expansive pads of all kinds, whether they are fitted with elegantly curved plywood or sliced, diced and topped with rustic timber frames.

Modular Sleeping Trailers Make More of Less

Not everyone can afford the time or money to buy or convert a van or bus. For those who need something smaller that can be hitched to a more traditional vehicle, there are still a lot of clever ways to get the most out of limited trailer space, including pop-outs and auto-expanding rooms that deploy on demand.

Flaps, wings and other folding elements can help bring more outdoor space in, extending interiors to include sheltered zones beyond the limits of whatever one has in tow.

Even a surprisingly small trailer can pack a lot of utility, including running water, power outlets, USB ports and LED lights — some even feature a full modular kitchen for a bit of light glamping. Mounted toolboxes, roof racks and cargo decks can help expand their functionality as well.

Bicycle, Motorcycle & Other Small-Space Trailers

Choosing to ride a bike instead of driving a car doesn’t have to mean foregoing the convenience of a camper trailer, though such options may require especially clever construction (not to mention physical endurance) in place of motorized assistance (or at least: an electric assist bicycle).

Bigger Rig Renovations & Off-the-Rails Creations

There may be rules to the roads, but there are practically no limits to the creativity of people who want to live their lives on them. Beyond the realm of conventional conversions are all kinds of creative cars, vans and trucks that are effectively inhabitable art.

Rolling Master Plans & Dreams of Nomadic Futures

It goes without saying that no one knows what the future of mobility will look like, but imagine for a moment a kind of city on rails made up of modules that could be moved from one place to the next, all running on existing train tracks. Consider the advantages for migratory seasonal markets, mobile concert venues and other businesses and events that benefit from moving around throughout the year, embracing a sort of perpetually nomadic urbanism. Hotels, restaurants and other commercial operations see changes in demand throughout a given year and and could conceivably pull up stakes to seek out better opportunities.

It may be an exercise in fantasy, but one has to wonder: what would the world look like if more people could take their architecture with them as they traveled? Between food trucks and container homes and other modular living solutions, not to mention the rise of autonomous vehicles, this prospect is in some ways already grounded in the real world around us. As more and more people move ever more often, working remotely and take their homes and businesses on the road, new typologies for portable spaces will no doubt continue to emerge and surprise us along the way.

People convert all kinds of unlikely objects into homes: sheds, shipping containers, school buses and even decommissioned wartime bunkers. These creative reclaimed homes can range from tiny to surprisingly spacious, but rarely are they quite as micro-sized (and round) as one particular project by Argentinean architect Martín Marro.

“Bunker” began as an exploration of Marro’s memories of his childhood home, which was converted from a 1940 service station. The architect sought to reconstruct not the physical space itself, but rather how he remembers it looking and feeling through the eyes of a child. As part of this venture, Marro found an old diesel tank with which to fulfill an unusual vision.

From outside, the bright yellow tank still looks just as it did when it was in use. But open the door and you’ll find an unexpected sight: an incredibly compact dwelling complete with a lounge chair, bed, television, lighting and storage space. Photographs of his own architectural projects are fixed to the rounded walls.

Mimicking a tank that stood outside his childhood home, the micro house essentially compacts Marro’s memory of the experience into a portable dwelling. “I transformed it into a bunker-cabin for then to seal it and perpetuate it, capturing time, thinking that the space I make present is an archeology of the future,” he says.

The “Bunker” cabin was initially put on display outside Marro’s actual childhood home before traveling to the #mac2018 contemporary art fair in the city of Córdoba-Argentina.

Building booms around the world can render entire neighborhoods unrecognizable in a matter of days, demolishing historic structures to make way for new developments. In cities like Beijing, where older architecture such as “siheyuan” courtyard houses stand out for their uniqueness and beauty, the transition from traditional to contemporary can feel all the more jarring. Urban development is all but inevitable to manage growing populations, but for many onlookers, it’s sad to see the past bulldozed in favor of new buildings that don’t even acknowledge the area’s cultural and architectural legacy.

Many of Beijing’s older buildings fell in a frenzy of demolition throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Traditional “hutongs,” or ancient city alleys lined with siheyuan residences, had fallen into disrepair and often lacked basic services and sanitation. City planners reportedly saw the historic, hutong-filled core of the city surrounding Tianenmen Square and the Forbidden City as prime real estate. In the ‘90s, about 600 hutong were destroyed every year, displacing roughly 500,000 residents. In place of those neighborhoods built during the Ming Dynasty came glittering skyscrapers and eight-lane highways.

Only a few hundred complete courtyard houses remain, down from the 3,000 that stood during the 1980s. But among those that still exist, an interesting trend is taking root: modernization projects that preserve and honor the historic structures while making them suitable for 21st century lifestyles. The best examples of respectful Chinese courtyard house renovations repair and maintain the existing elements of the siheyuan, keep the courtyards open to the outdoors and add new complementary elements that augment the usefulness of the original buildings without diminishing their character.

Transforming Formerly Hidden Courtyards into Inclusive Spaces

Designing homes around courtyards is an ancient tradition in China, with evidence of walled-in yards going as far back as the Shang Dynasty (approx. 1700 – 1100 BCE). The houses themselves opened out onto the alleyways outside, creating tranquil and private outdoor spaces protected from the eyes of strangers. This layout is similar to that of Beijing itself, which began as a walled city arranged like a checkerboard according to Confucian code. Each courtyard contained at least two trees along with water features and caged birds. Originally, each siheyuan was occupied by a single (often wealthy) family, but over time, they came to be inhabited by groups of families forming their own tiny villages. Many have since been converted into businesses.

The walls of a hutong “can be seen as a boundary between public and private venues,” acknowledges the firm MINOR Lab, which completed this renovation in the Dongcheng District in 2017 updating an old hutong with lots of transparent glass, translucent textured acrylic panels for privacy and warm wood. But their project, like many others, transforms these former residences into spaces that are meant for community use.

“Within the walls remains an inward and enclosed space, however, the yard resembles a vast container, letting in sky, wind, sunlight, air and sound. The crowns of the two grand gingko trees are the flowing roof in the open air, overlapping layers of grey tiles. The exterior space under the trees connects to the interior one underneath the four roofs, floating and exchanging in a continuous way.”

An interesting project by the firm CAA explores the continuation of multi-family and multi-generational hutong traditions in a way that can help support the owner’s aging parents, who have Alzheimer’s Disease. CAA kept the hutong’s original wooden structure and added an additional steel roof, creating larger windows and skylights in the existing structures to make them brighter. The layout of the courtyard and the surrounding houses gives each generation their own private living space, but they’re connected to each other, and the flat, accessible courtyard allows the client’s mother to get around in her wheelchair.

“Tea House in Hutong” by ARCHSTUDIO is a striking example of the bolder approach. Forced to demolish parts that were too unsafe to keep, the architects added new wood and metal structures and created more enclosed spaces protected from the elements by adding a white-painted concrete roof. Openings to the outdoors are glassed in like atriums, and you can still get a sense of the original space as you gaze across the courtyard despite all of these alterations.

The same firm took an old siheyuan in Beijing’s Dashilar Area and transformed it into a public space with a dramatic, river-like undulating surface of grey brick that flows in and out of the interior and exterior spaces. Curved walls hide auxiliary spaces like the kitchen, bathrooms, private guest rooms and storage areas while visually connecting communal spaces like the dining room and reception to the courtyard. It’s not subtle by any means and it doesn’t shy away from ultramodern touches, but somehow the combination of old and new still feels cohesive.

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Art Of The Chinese Courtyard Respectful Renovations Keep Hutongs Alive

The time to talk about climate change as if it’s merely a hazy possibility that won’t occur in our lifetime anyway has long passed. Multiple recent reports have made it clear that it’s already happening, and its effects will be much worse than previously expected.

In 2016, the Paris climate accords set a goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (at which it’s already failing); the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now says two degrees is both inevitable by the year 2040 and genocidal, set to cause the death of all coral reefs, extreme wildfires, heat waves and other weather events that will subsequently threaten the world’s food supply and transform the global economy.

Clearly, addressing the problem at its source is the most crucial course of action. For the sake of the planet and virtually all life upon it, including our own species, we must rework practically every aspect of civilization, from our energy infrastructure and agricultural practices to corporate and governmental operations (because, while the efforts require widespread support and small actions are still important, the onus to lessen the impacts of inevitable climate change cannot be placed on individuals.) Technology and architecture won’t save the world alone, but it can help, and if we’re going to head off some of the most immediate climate change effects, we have to start now.

Architects, engineers and urban planners have already begun to work on approaches that range from visions of futuristic cities that would take many decades to build from the ground up to more practical and immediate solutions that adapt to the new normal. Extreme weather, rapid influxes of climate refugees and the need to continuously evolve in response to the changing world are among the top issues to address.

Managing Fires and Floods

Flooding is inevitable. Stronger, more frequent storms are already wreaking havoc on the United States and throughout the world, leaving catastrophic flooding in their wake that can extend much farther inland than anticipated, particularly along rivers. The pace of ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica is on track to raise sea levels 26 inches by the year 2100, and many scientists consider that to be a conservative estimate. Cities like Miami, Houston, Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila, Lagos, London and Shanghai are at immediate risk due to groundwater extraction, soft sediments and, in Miami’s case, permeable limestone that will allow water to rise from underground.

Sea levels are rising faster on the east coast of the United States than anywhere else, and locales from North Carolina to Florida already lost 5 inches of coastline between 2011 and 2015. Researchers believe it has something to do with the slowing Gulf Stream, the effects of El Niño cycles and shifts in major Atlantic Ocean weather patterns. Experts predict that many cities could be swallowed altogether within the lifetime of children born in the current decade. 3D animated Google Earth gifs by Climate Central based on an extreme sea level rise scenario from the NOAA show us what this could look like in a few major cities, and it’s not good.

So what are cities doing to plan for this? Not much, in most cases, but that could change soon. Many of the most vulnerable cities are consulting with experts on plans of attack that involve building in safer areas, transforming the most flood-prone zones into buffer areas, integrating green spaces capable of absorbing large quantities of stormwater, elevating new structures, improving the climate resiliency of low-income housing and creating systems that work with, rather than against, a changed waterfront.

For a recent competition called Resilient by Design, which challenged design teams to reimagine the Bay Area in the face of potentially devastating climate change, global design firm HASSELL envisions a new network of green spaces and “water-loving places” connected by canals and creeks. Forging these wide, green waterways creates controlled paths for flooding and plans to use them for transport and recreation. Native plants treat runoff, a “living levee” forms a wetland for restoring habitat and holding stormwater and schools built on higher ground become hubs for water treatment and community activities.

In Boston, SCAPE Landscape Architecture collaborated with the Mayor on a vision to protect the city’s 47 miles of shoreline as part of the Imagine Boston 2030 initiative. Using the city’s Climate Ready Boston 2070 flood maps, the team demonstrates how flood-resilient buildings, elevated landscapes, waterfront parks, connections to the waterfront and a deployable flood wall system could address rising water and enhance community access to the waterfront at the same time. Key transport corridors like Main Street and Bennington Street will have to be elevated.

“We’re not just planning for the next storm we’ll face, we’re planning for the storms the next generation will face. A resilient, climate-ready Boston harbor presents an opportunity to protect Boston, connect Boston, and enhance Boston, now and for the future,” says Mayor Martin J. Walsh. “As we enter a new era in our Harbor’s history, Boston can show the world that resilience is not only the ability to survive adversity but to emerge even stronger than before. That’s the promise of a Resilient Boston.”

In fact, reintroducing natural systems could be key, all over the world. For Seoul, architect Chris Reed of ASLA proposes giving water more space in the city with the knowledge that we can’t hold it back and might as well do what we can to enjoy it. We could “bring new life and richness into the public realm” with fish parks, canal streets, water plazas and other spaces, and transform vacant land into new wetlands that bring value into adjacent neighborhoods. The city’s Cheonggyecheon River is already a great example of this approach, uncovered from beneath roadways and highways and renovated into a central riverfront offering both floodwater containment and recreational space in the heart of downtown.

Water, of course, isn’t the only force of nature we have to protect ourselves from. With wildfires raging across much of the West, many people are wondering what they can do to make their homes more fire-resistant. While land management practices will have to change in many parts of the country to anticipate and mitigate wildfires to the greatest extent possible, fireproofing could at least help salvage some structures when they can’t be stopped. The good news is, a few small changes can make a huge difference, and they can be surprisingly affordable, too.

Las Vegas-based GigaCrete makes prefab houses with recyclable, non-flammable materials including steel frames, interlocking wall panels and special wall coatings that make them hurricane resistant, bulletproof and waterproof to boot. A 576-square-foot, one-bedroom model costs just $24,000, and they can be scaled up and customized. Other approaches involve the use of tempered glass, minimizing exposed wood, non-flammable decks, rooftop sprinkler systems, mesh screens that prevent smoldering materials from getting into vents and strategies to clear brush. It’s likely that features like these will increasingly be built into new construction in fire-prone areas.

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Come Hell Or High Water Cities Must Evolve In The Face Of Climate Change