Group 41 Inc. (www.group41inc.com), a San Francisco-based design firm, has long been experimenting with shipping container design. Besides recently winning a Lifecycle award and submitting a shipping container design to the Google 10 to 100, the company is currently working on a large multi-family development in Utah that is to be entirely constructed out of shipping containers. Below is additional info on the project and a link to Group 41′s container design site: http://www.containernation.com/

This proposal is a design for market-rate housing in the suburbs of Salt Lake City Utah. Involving the use of nearly 1000 shipping containers to create up to 200 units of housing, and sitting on a concrete commercial “base” that also includes parking, this major development is slated for a Transit Oriented district near a commuter rail station. Currently, in the preliminary conceptual phase, Container Nation has created two different proposed schemes that take different approaches to the stacking and build-out of the containers. Preliminary local Planning approvals are expected by mid-2009.

With the economy tanking, shipping container building may finally be able to gain some serious traction with home builders and developers who are looking for ways to build homes more efficiently. At least, that is what pioneers like Joel Karr from Group 41 are hoping. It’s great to see that even in the land of tract housing, people are looking at this as a viable option.

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