You might not want to live in a shipping container permanently, but now you can test-drive one for a night or two at the affordable, streamlined and modern Ccasa Hostel in Vietnam. Colorful cargo containers are stacked on top of each other to create a tower of rentable rooms, set within an open air framework that takes advantage of the tropical local climate. Located in Nha Trang just a three-minute walk from the beach, it’s intended for backpackers who flock to the area to enjoy local mineral spring resorts and temples.

The design of the hostel is based on that of a family home, with lots of beds sharing bathroom, kitchen and living room facilities. Some of the converted shipping containers offer private bedrooms, while others are packed full of bunks in traditional hostel fashion. The containers are seen as just a place to sleep or rest in between adventures or socializing in the common areas.

Ccasa Hostel contains three functional blocks: the sleeping block, the washing block and the serving block. The serving block is made of steel frames and black painted metal sheets, and the washing block mimics typical Vietnamese architecture with white-painted bricks and concrete. The three colors of the shipping containers denote different kinds of bedrooms.

Instead of the dank, dark corridors you’d usually find in a cheap hostel, there are breezy open-air walkways looking down onto the courtyard below, which is filled with trees. A system of ropes and steel framing encourages climbing vines to obscure the shipping containers on the rear of the building, and as it grows, it’ll create a living screen that filters air, light and noise.

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but a Subway sandwich shop made of shipping containers is helping workers at the World Trade Center building site get their noontime grub on more efficiently. The shop will rise along with the building’s construction to its eventual 108-story height, making it easier for construction workers to grab lunch. They don’t have to descend to ground level to grab a bite, so they can spend their 30-minute lunch breaks actually enjoying lunch.

The unique Subway shop is made up of nine shipping containers. The three-story structure – complete with an eating area and a compost unit to recycle waste – is perched on a hydraulic platform in the middle of the building’s frame. Like all other Subways, this one features fresh, baked-on-site bread. It also features a full menu, but will provide workers with some menu items not available at any other Subway: hot dogs, hamburgers and New York pretzels.

The Freedom Tower, more formally known as One World Trade Center, will be the main building at the former World Trade Center site. The building has been under construction since 2006, but only recently did the construction reach a significant height above ground level. In December of 2009, this Subway restaurant was put together to make lunchtime easier for the builders: when the structure is nearly complete, it will take around 45 minutes to get to the bottom from the top. The on-site eatery gives workers tasty, fresh food without having to spend their entire lunch break traveling to and from a restaurant.

Although the high-rise hoagie shop is great advertising for Subway, the restaurant got the contract because they were willing to take on the project at cost. They’re not making a profit on the food, but they are giving workers a welcome break from cold meatloaf sandwiches. And as for the restaurant itself, it’s one of the most creative uses of shipping container architecture we’ve seen yet.

Shipping containers are great for living in, but how about working in one? Given the enormous success of low-cost, environmentally-friendly recycled shipping container homes, some architects and designers are extending their scope to include commercial buildings also. Many of these buildings are brand new or even still in the planning stages, but some have existed for many years because they were the cheapest, most readily available option. These buildings prove that necessity truly is the mother of invention.  Click the thumbnails below for more images of and information on these amazing designs:

Steel shipping containers are the temporary homes of countless consumer items being transported all around the world. Items are packed into the cargo containers in their country of origin, then shipped to wherever they’re destined to be sold. Once they’re emptied at the appropriate port, many of these cargo containers simply sit around empty or get melted down for re-use. But recently, they’ve found new lives as homes and other types of buildings. Perhaps the two most appealing aspects of building with shipping containers are the affordability and the green construction factor: shipping container homes are far less expensive than new-material traditional homes, and reusing them rather than melting them down significantly reduces the carbon footprint of the steel containers.

But how does it feel to live in a shipping container? Most people who have built this type of home say that they’re sturdy and modern, and when several containers are connected the building can be just about any size, from a single-container loft to a multi-container family home. Some residents of shipping container homes and offices choose to display the origins of their buildings by leaving the facades alone. Others disguise the shipping containers by applying exteriors that make the recycled buildings look just like any other. Whether they’re rough around the edges or covered in cutting-edge design, shipping container homes are definitely going places. Click the thumbnails below for more images of and information on these amazing designs: