The Well Traveled Home

A house by the ocean is a popular dream and the real estate developers in San Juan del Sur are happy to encourage it with promises to build your own white stucco hacienda with clay tiled roof for about $100,000. If your budget doesn't go that far and your esthetic sense cries out for something different, an intriguing solution is being offered under the term cargotecture, architecture that employs standard shipping containers as modular building components.

Due to China's trade surplus, empty shipping containers are piling up in dockyards around the world simply because they are cheaper to replace than to ship back empty. Currently, over four million more containers arrive in the United States each year than are shipped out and the resulting surplus has driven prices down to as little as $1,000. Constructed to precise international standards, containers are strong enough to be stacked nine high while fully loaded and some imaginative architects are seeing a world of possibilities in these sturdy 40'x8'x8' boxes.

Its steel frame is the container's load bearing component, so the corrugated steel panels that make up the sides can be cut away partially to install windows and doors, or entirely to combine two or more containers together, without weakening the structure. Virtually any configuration is possible. Once it is lined with sprayed foam insulation, installing wiring, plumbing, interior surfaces and fixtures can make a container ready for habitation at a price of about $75 per square foot in North America. Compared with the $200 per square foot cost of on site house construction, cargotecture starts to make sense.

Pour a concrete pad as a foundation and the finished containers can be trucked to the site, put in place with a crane and bolted into position. A structure of two containers side by side has 640 square feet of interior floor space, more than sufficient for a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living area. Extending the roof creates an additional outdoor living space, usable year round in Nicaragua's climate.

Perhaps not ideal for urban applications, cargotecture can deliver a cottage or beach house faster, far cheaper and with lower environmental impact than traditional building. With the addition of a well, composting toilet and wind powered electrical generator, you can step off the grid with only the lightest of ecological footprints.