Using Shipping Containers in Houses and Other Buildings

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The container itself
Corrosion
Zoning
Heat
Toxicity

1. The container itself

During the early years of the Roman Empire, Vitruvius wrote a textbook on architecture that specified three features that buildings should have:

Firmitas (firmness, strength, stability)
Utilitas (utility, correctness to purpose)
Venustas (beauty).

Shipping containers seem to be very successful in meeting the first two criteria. After all they are made to be stackable, made to last despite being shipped across oceans and continents. As for beauty, well to a certain extent that's up to you (and your architect) to achieve.

But besides meeting these general criteria, containers appear to offer several more specific benefits. In particular:

availability (the US has a surplus of them)
economy (I have seen used containers as low as $1500 in the USA)
malleability (for anyone who can weld and cut metal)
durability (they survive salt air and cranes)
portability (even across oceans)
modularity (a modernist idea...): for instance stackability (using proper hardware)
reusability (for environmental correctness)
transformability (see Lot/ek Mobile Dwelling Unit)

Several of these characteristics are especially important in light of the predicament that many consumers now find themselves in, namely the high cost of housing.

2. Corrosion

Shipping containers are designed to endure salty ocean air, which is more corrosive: therefore they're coated with a zinc-laden paint which protects against the salty air.

If you look at how containers have been used as housing or other buildings, you'll notice a pattern, namely that they tend to be used close to water.

However if you want a structure to use more inland, in a dryer environment, a container could be ideal.

Here is a useful introduction about corrosion: MTEC link.

3. The zoning situation

Although containers should be perfectly usable in conventional residential situations especially when stacked, paired (as in the Berkeley market), and used to create an interior space using a roof kit (as in the 12-Container House), not to mention when they are used as mini-hotels, it also occurs to me that containers may especially handy in situations where a foundation is not permitted, but a mobile structure is permitted. Weekend retreats, writer's sheds, and the like are ideal uses for container houses.

4. Heat

Steel conducts heat very well. Because of this insulation is vital, either on the inside or outside of a container. If you look at how people are using containers, often they are inside of wood-frame homes and thus there is a natural opportunity to put the insulation inside the wood walls.

5. Toxicity issues

Two items that must be dealt with as regards containers are the toxicity of whatever paint that was applied to the container and the toxicity of the chemical used to preserve the floor boards, which are often teak wood.

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