23 Incredible Shipping Container Homes & Best Places To Buy

May 21, 2023

You might be inspired to build one of your own.

After traveling the seven seas for years, shipping containers are finding second lives as an affordable green building material. As such, there are architects and designers around the world who are getting incredibly creative with them, incorporating them into impressive edifices. Here are some of our favorite shipping container homes and hotels from across the globe.

🏡Love looking at designer spaces for inspo. Us, too. Let's obsess over them together.

Spanning 3,000 square feet, this shipping container home in Denver, Colorado, has an industrial aesthetic with rustic elements. Inside, a massive double-height great room is the core of the space.

Designed by modular and prefab house company Honomobo, this home nestled into the woods is located on Webber Island near Honey Harbour, Ontario. It's one of Honomobo's HO4+ units, comprising four shipping containers.

Architecture firm River and Rain has created an indoor-outdoor oasis in Dhaka, Bangladesh, named Escape Den. It's crafted from parts of four recycled shipping containers.

The Quadrum Ski & Yoga Resort in Gudauri, Georgia, features stacked shipping containers clad in wood paneling, creating a modernist ski lodge that contrasts greatly with the Caucasus Mountains backdrop.

The Seven Havens luxury hotel is located on a hillside in Lombok, Indonesia, and has one of the best views on the island it sits on. There are four individual rooms available for rent, as well as a three-bedroom villa.

Instead of staying in a tiny house, you can stay in this tiny shipping container, an eco-friendly vacation rental in Atlanta, Georgia, that's listed on Airbnb. The cozy unit has a lovely patio, a hammock, and a firepit.

Architecture firm Culumus designed the facilities for Devil's Corner, a winery in Tasmania, Australia, from repurposed shipping containers. Beyond a tasting room, there's a lookout tower where visitors can take in the surrounding scenery.

Owners Gabriela Calvo and Marca Peralta had a budget of just $40,000 to build their dream home near San Jose, Costa Rica. Architecture firm Studio Saxe recycled two shipping containers to keep the project within budget.

Located in the port town of Warnemünde, Germany, this hostel offers 64 guest rooms with 188 beds, all built into old shipping containers. Reclaimed materials make appearances throughout the property, like the shipping pallets that were used to create seating in the lounge.

Architecture firm James & Mau partnered modular home company Infiniski on Manifesto House, a shipping container home in Curacaví, Chile. It's clad in recycled slatted wood pallets, which can be opened to help regulate the temperature inside.

Camping meets tiny house living in this off-the-grid Airbnb. Though it has fabulous bohemian decor, it does lack running water, WiFi, and a true kitchen.

One of the most striking shipping container buildings in the world, Joshua Tree Residence by Whitaker Studio is located in the California desert and comprised of a starburst-like conglomeration of white containers.

The PV14 house in Dallas, Texas, was architecture firm M Gooden Design's first project using shipping containers—a total of 14 were used during construction.

Artist and architect Ty Kelly built this one-bedroom abode in Livingston, Montana, using two shipping containers. He sold it to a private buyer in 2018: his neighbor down the road.

Located in Brooklyn, New York, this Airbnb was one of the first shipping container homes in the city. Its interiors have an industrial-meets-bohemian aesthetic.

There are many mansions in the Hamptons, but there's only one shipping-container mansion in town: the beachfront Beach Box in Amagansett. Its developer listed it in 2012 for $1.4 million.

Travis Price Architects built the Sea Container Housing DC as a student dormitory in Washington, D.C. It only took seven months to build from conception to full occupancy.

This Airbnb vacation home in Wellington, New Zealand, was built from three stacked shipping containers. The rental has its own screening room and hydrotherapy spa.

This colorful hostel in Nha Trang, Vietnam, was the first in the city to be built of shipping containers. It's designed to mimic a traditional Vietnamese house with distinct blocks for living, sleeping, and washing.

Set in Oklahoma City, this apartment complex by Alfred Hall Monaghan Morris comprises four two-bedroom units built from 16 shipping containers. There's even a tornado bunker on the property, given the apartments’ location in Tornado Alley.

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