In a box, with a fox?

I'm entering a sustainable design competition with two students from across campus. Architecture students! Civil engineers and architects are supposed to be mortal enemies like red paint and clean white shirts. But, I like my architecture teammates. It probably helps that one of them is an old friend from high school.

While this competition is a little on the conceptual side for my liking (no calculations!? will it really work?), I really like it because of the cool and weird sustainable practices that I'd never dreamed existed. We aren't designing houses with huge (and never used) front lawns, there will be no white picket fence here! Two car garage? Please, we only have 160 square feet to work with. Unfortunately, we aren't very far into our design so I don't know exactly what we are doing.

On my internet research journey I stumbled into the exciting world of container architecture. Shipping containers used as the structural material for residents, offices, and more! Here are some results:


Apartment style
http://www.containercity.com/


Office Space
http://weburbanist.com/2008/05/26/cargo-container-homes-and-offices/


Yeah, that's a container hotel.
http://weburbanist.com/2008/05/26/cargo-container-homes-and-offices/


Awesome! I love it! It looks like the set of Rent! It's a cheap,reused, and readily available material! It's already designed to take loads, YAY! You can stack them 12 high!