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.

A series of disused railway arches in London have become surprisingly cozy interior spaces with the addition of modular wooden systems that fit together like puzzles. Architecture firm Boano Prišmontas has developed a kit of parts that can be quickly and easily deployed in a variety of similar spaces, working with developers and local governments to make those spaces valuable to the community once more.

“The Arches Project” uses dry-joint techniques to infill abandoned “pocket spaces” around the UK, including undercrofts and multi-story car parks as well as the arches beneath railroad lines. The firm says its value lies in its “nomadic, temporary and sustainable approach.” The company that owns the railroad already rents out these spaces to pop-up shops and other businesses, but provides nothing but some neon lights and corrugated plastic lining, which doesn’t improve the thermal quality of the space, and only allows certified installers to fix the lining onto the listed brick vaults.

“Boano Prišmontas worked around this constraint to design a freestanding self-buildable plug-in space, a room-within-a-room that is built by expanding its shape as much as possible to infill the vault of an arch.

The digitally fabricated structural system is comprised of two elements:

1. The boxes. Modular CNC-cut plywood units that are repeated to infill the space as much as possible and stacked on walls to support the beams as well as the external polycarbonate cladding.

2. The beams. Modular CNC-cut plywood pieces joined together to cover a maximum span of 7.2m. They are the support onto which the insulation sheet is clipped on.

The boxes are sized to host the polycarbonate facade, which allows to fill the internal space with natural light. The polycarbonate panels also spill light on the street showing a glimpse of the activity taking place inside the space.”

Made entirely of certified birch plywood sheets, the puzzle pieces are CNC cut to minimize material wastage and ensure a perfect fit. Every component, including the facade cladding and insulation sheet, is made to be re-deployed when dismantled (a basic tenet of the Designed for Disassembly movement.)

“The railway arches are a unique urban asset as they host all sorts of retail activities and productive spaces such as studios, laboratories, workshops, mechanics, shops, micro breweries, and coworking spaces to name just a few. Railway arches are the backbone of the ‘productive London’. The Arches Project aims to preserve and promote the diversity of uses by quickly creating a spacious, warm and dry space that delivers affordable workspace for local businesses.”

Overall, this is a pretty cool example of making better use of available urban space in a way that produces very little waste. Ideally, there would also be some serious consideration given to how the project impacts its surrounding community, including whether poor and unhoused people are able to take part in it and whether the installations promote gentrification, potentially having a negative future impact on affordability in the area. Projects that don’t consider social impacts simply aren’t sustainable.

Designed to serve as an ersatz kitchen for those living without, this seven-in-one design features a cutting board, an induction hob, a pot and pan, a wrap for utensils and cutlery, a dish rack, all tucked into a portable box.

While it may sound like a dystopian product for a generation that can’t afford houses, it could come in handy for those sharing kitchens at places like the Royal College of Art, where designer Yu Li created it.

But the target, says the designer, “the end users are millennials, young professionals who don’t have sufficient kitchen space. They might be sharing the kitchen with others – facing the situation of ‘kitchen traffic’ – or living alone in a studio with a kitchenette.”

The back pulls out to be used as a tray, which can also be turned into a drying rack. The induction hob has a timer and temperature controls. “The idea is to trim the original kitchen space down to a few minimal elements so space can be designed simpler, neater and transformed into other purposes to increase the space utilisation.”

As more and more novel apartment units get built in which some spaces are shared, this could be at least a temporary solution, if not a real answer to the systemic problem of home affordability. That, or it could be a great camping (or glamping) companion.

Built at and launched from a local boatyard, this mobile park prototype (or: “parkipelago”) is the first of a series of floating platforms designed to provide recreational space for kayakers, swimmers, sunbathers and event space for small gatherings and public lectures.

Created Australian architect Marshall Blecher and Danish designer Magnus Maarbjerg, the first wooden platform in the set is just over 200 square feet and features a single linden tree at its center.

Nine other Copenhagen Islands will join it out in the water soon, each offering something unique, including a diving board, stage, sauna and cafe. They can also be joined for special events, connected to create one larger integrated structure.

“It was developed to introduce life and activity to Copenhagen’s rapidly developing harbour and to bring back some of the whimsy that has been lost in its development,” explain the designers. They hope their work can also inspire similar projects in other cities. Aptly, one of the first planned activities for this initial micro-park will be a lecture on creative urban design strategies.

“My hometown of Sydney has an enormous and beautiful harbour, but it is dominated by waterside mansions and rows of underused white yachts,” says Blecher. “Projects like this could help democratise harbours and bring some life back onto the water.” And in big, bustling cities without sufficient park space, the water offers a ready source of square footage that often goes underutilized.

The first stage of the project was funded by the Danish arts fund (Statenskunstfond) and Havnekulturpuljen, an organisation that promotes and cultural activities within the harbor. Blecher and Maarbjerg are working with the Danish arts fund and other not-for profit groups to fund the next stage of development. Images by Christian Emdal and drone photos by Airflix.