For years, architects have promoted the possibilities of transforming shipping containers into housing. But design and functional challenges make that process difficult. With its shippable modular buildings, MEKA may have found a livable alternative.
Lloyd Alter discusses the work of MEKA, a company of architects and engineers that build what he calls "housing containers": "modules of houses that are built to shipping container dimensions to take advantage of the shipping container infrastructure, without most of the problems that actually arise from working with shipping containers."
"Paul Rudolph once said 'The Mobile Home is the 20th Century Brick,'" writes Alter. "After spending most of my life looking at shipping containers and thinking about how they can be used for housing, I really do believe that the ISO shipping container form is the 21st century brick, and that MEKA has turned that brick into a building at last."
Read the full story: MEKA reinvents shipping container housing
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City of Wisconsin Rapids
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
KFH Group Inc.
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello