Shipping containers may seem like a self-contained drag and drop solution for quick and affordable housing, but the process of making them livable is a lot more complicated than that. The premise is alluring: you reclaim one of the many disused containers found all over the world as the structural basis of a compact home, maybe stacking or otherwise combining them to create a larger structure. Insulate, add utilities, furnish, receive praise. Right?

But once you get started, you quickly realize the materials are not all that easy to work with (as some architects and engineers have been warning for years.) At best, you’re looking at some serious work reinforcing the containers so they can withstand being stacked perpendicularly. At worst, you end up with something that looks like Amazon’s new shipping container house.

Amazon seems set on making virtually anything deliverable, and now that includes houses, though the MODS 40 Foot Tiny Home is among the most expensive things anyone will ever buy on the site at $40,000. Amazon itself doesn’t manufacture the home – it’s actually made by Wisconsin-based MODS International – but it’s a first for the mega retailer, theoretically making the purchase of a home as easy as pressing the ‘Buy it Now’ button from your Amazon app. There’s just one (okay, way more than one) problem, as you may have guessed from a glance at the photos. It’s hideous. Is this what we’ve come to accept as reasonable for affordable housing in 2018?

Let’s back up a minute. Shipping container architecture can definitely be a lot nicer looking than this. It’s been done many times, notably by the firm LOT-EK, which produced all the cool PUMA pop-up shops and the stunning APAP OpenSchool in Korea. The Adriance House in Maine preserves the industrial aesthetic of the crates, placing them within a larger envelope. Casa Oruga by Sebastián Irarrázaval Delpiano cantilevers the ends of multiple containers over a hillside. Patrick Bradley’s shipping container office has a warm and welcoming look, and it’s cantilevered, too.

Take a close look at all of these projects. They’re not single bare shipping containers, primarily left as-is, nor was stacking them as easy as it appears. Shipping containers are made to be stacked vertically, not offset from each other. As architect Mark Hogan of OpenScope Studio notes, the roofs of shipping containers are made of light gauge steel, and the rails at the top aren’t structural, so this kind of stacking requires serious (and expensive) steel reinforcement. So does cantilevering. Cutting openings in the containers risks the structural integrity, so again, you’ve got to reinforce.

Then there’s the fact that heating and cooling them can be tough – passive strategies don’t work due to the nature of the container itself. It’s a lot easier to install utilities and mechanical systems if you add some kind of sheathing to the outside, which takes away the raw character of the container, if that’s the look you’re going for. You could also shelter them within a larger structure to keep them comfortable inside. Obviously, all of this ups your costs and takes away from the simplicity of the project.

That may not be a problem if you’re building a hotel, a larger multi-container home, a school or a restaurant. But when all you’re trying to do is use a single container to build a cheap house, you’re ultimately taking on a lot of work (like thoroughly cleaning out all of the industrial chemicals and pesticides) and sacrificing a lot of comfort and usability while uglying up the neighborhood in the process. There are many ways to build small houses on the cheap that don’t require welding or the use of a crane.

“Housing is usually not a technology problem. All parts of the world have vernacular housing, and it usually works quite well for the local climate. There are certainly places with material shortages, or situations where factory built housing might be appropriate – especially when an area is recovering from a disaster. In this case prefab buildings would make sense – but doing them in containers does not. …If you’re going to go through the trouble of building in factory, why not build to a dimension that is appropriate for human habitation?” – Mark Hogan, OpenScope Studio

Shipping container architecture has its place and purpose, particularly when it’s located in active or former industrial areas as a nod to the history of the setting. Since it’s fast to deploy, it can also make sense for temporary emergency housing. But it’s not particularly well suited to affordable housing for the masses, especially since developers are prone to cutting corners to save costs. Do we really want to see fields of raw single-container houses in our cities, housing shortage or no? When built on a budget, they’re likely to be far less livable than stick-built structures of the same size, and it’s not like we don’t have the technology to create better prefab solutions.

Most cities around the world are dealing with severe income inequality. With population increasing and the climate growing more unstable all the time, we’re going to need a whole lot more housing that’s not just affordable but humane – while also retaining the architectural and cultural character of individual places. It’s worthwhile to consider whether normalizing shipping container housing as a ‘budget’ solution will lead us in a direction that’s actually good for humanity, or just slide us further into the devaluation of low income people.

Google sees Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service and raises it with the enhanced aesthetics of its own Project Wing, a series of autonomous aerial vehicles currently being tested. In development for the past two years and a secret until this week, Project Wing was initially conceived as a way to deliver emergency aid like defibrillator kits to people in remote places or disaster areas.

Now that the prototype vehicles have been tested (in Australia, which is far more lax about the use of drones than the United States,) it seems that they could be used to deliver goods to customers in a similar way to Amazon Prime Air, as well.

“As part of our research, we built a vehicle and traveled to Queensland, Australia for some test flights,” says Google of the project. “There, we successfully delivered a first aid kit, candy bars, dog treats, and water to a couple of Australian farmers.”

Developed by the company’s research arm, Google X, the Project Wing drones have a wingspan of about 4.9 feet and a total weight capacity of 22 pounds, the bulk of which is taken up by the drone itself at 18.7 pounds. It doesn’t need a runway to take off or land, and can hold its position hovering in one spot.

Looking like tiny blunt airplanes, the drones are at least a visual improvement over Amazon’s design, which was mocked for resembling a flying barbecue grill.

The remains of Henry Ford’s failed rubber-producing city, two rusting theme parks, intricate colonial facades and a railroad that set the scene for 7,000 deaths are among Brazil’s fascinating abandonments. Whether set deep within the Amazon or in the thick of some of the world’s busiest and most metropolitan cities, these 7 abandoned wonders amaze and intrigue.

Abandoned Christmas Theme Park: Albanoel

Cidade Albanoel is a Santa Claus-centric park dreamed up by local politician Antonio Albano Reis, who was known as the ‘Santa Claus of Quintino.’ Meant to be the largest themed attraction in Brazil, the park would have also had a bunch of other teemed areas, like a replica of an Old West town. A plot of land the equivalent of 460 football fields was purchased and work began. Water slides were constructed, foundations were laid for the Western town, and Santa Land was completed.  But Reis, the money, brains and motivation behind the project, perished in a tragic car accident just outside the gates in 2000, and everything came to a screeching halt. Since Santa Land was already done, it opened to the public, but closed after just a few short years.

Drowned Church of Old Petrolândia

Here’s a nice example of an abandonment that’s actually way more interesting and beautiful after its loss to the forces of nature than it was to start. The church of old Petrolândia currently resembles some sort of ancient ruin, a series of brick-accented arches rising from blue-green waters. Most of the town was relocated due to the construction of a dam for a new hydroelectric plant. The remains of the rest were flooded, now lost beneath the surface, with the exception of this one tall structure.

Fordlândia: Henry Ford’s Failed Jungle Fantasy

In 1928, Henry Ford trumpeted an idealized American city, in the middle of the Amazon: come live at Fordlândia, he told potential employees, and enjoy steady, profitable work in tropical paradise. The prefabricated industrial town was established near the city of Santarém, Brazil as a rubber factory to make tires for his booming car company, so Ford could avoid reliance on British rubber (sourced in Malaysia.) But there were problems right from the start. The land was rocky and infertile, and Ford failed to hire managers that knew how to work it or had any idea how to avoid problems like blight and pests in a rubber tree plantation.

Few Americans were actually convinced to go, especially since Ford forbade women, alcohol and tobacco within the town limits. Indigenous workers weren’t thrilled about being given hamburgers to eat and American-style accommodations, and they weren’t exactly treated well. On top of all that, Ford never even stepped foot on the plantation.

Then, in 1945, synthetic rubber became available. The whole Fordlâlndia project was nixed without ever producing an ounce of rubber for the company, the structures left behind in the jungle. The decaying town included a hospital, power plant, library, hotel, golf course and dozens of employee houses, some of which are still standing. Ford lost over $200 million in today’s money on the enterprise.

Skyscraper Slum: Edificio Sao Vito

From the time it was built in 1959 until it finally came down in 2011, Edificio São Vito was the city of São Paulo’s largest vertical slum. Referred to by locals as Treme-Treme (shiver-shiver), the 27-story structure was initially meant to provide cheap and efficient accommodations for students, professionals, immigrants and travelers, with 624 apartments measuring about 300 square feet each. But by the 1980s, those apartments were split into multiple units to accommodate thousands upon thousands of low-income inhabitants. There was no trash or sewer service, so waste was simply dumped out the windows. The building turned into one big death trap once one of the three elevators stopped working, and as crime rose, residents began to  leave in droves. It stood virtually abandoned for years until officials finally demolished it.

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Failed Jungle Utopia 7 Abandoned Wonders Of Brazil