Remember, when you were a kid and built houses, castles and forts with plastic building blocks? These homes look like Lego blocks stacked up, in multi-colored orange, blue, rust and green hues. The homes can be as upscale as you want or as rustic as you please. Container architecture is evolving because there is a glut of shipping containers in places like Los Angeles, where there are ports and stacks of shipping containers are piled up wasting away. Some innovtive architects and builders are recycling these waste products and designing homes and low income apartments out of them worldwide.

Shipping container homes are inexpensive, transportable and stackable and able to survive most disasters but building codes can be bothersome depending upon where you live. They are structurally sound and in abundant supply, but before you buy, be sure to check with the local authorities.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0410,essay,51672,1.html

Containerization is the use of steel boxes that can be filled with virtually any commodity and loaded from a vessel directly onto a truck or rail link. The major effect of containerization was the elimination of the need to unload ships crate by individual crate, and the permanent decline of New York City's ports. Containerization also gutted the waterfront workforce. My father used to joke that the least they could have done was give us a free shipping container to live in. Well, now I can live in one. Globalization has littered the world with 40-foot-long shipping containers... there are plenty of cargo containers to go around. Twenty-one thousand containers hit American shores every day of the year, and tens of thousands reach the waterfronts of other countries, with many more at sea on any given day.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18475601/

America is exporting so little, shipping companies face the dilemma of what to do with these 32,000-pound containers. Increasingly too expensive to ship back overseas empty, these steel boxes, which can be as large as 20-by-48-feet, are stacked high, sitting in ports around the country. There are as many as 300,000 containers, by some estimates...

Generally, architects offer container homes for anywhere from $125 to $150 per sq. ft. There are container home kits from 1,000 to 3,000 square feet.

For instance, Adam Kalkin has sold a dozen of his so-called Quik Houses, each based on five shipping containers. These are two-story, 2,000-square-foot homes with skylights and enormous glass windows, equipped with three bedrooms and two baths. The price, which ranges from $76,000 for the basic kit to $160,000 (with all the bells and whistles like a stainless-steel kitchen and mahogany doors), is under $100 per square foot, not including land or foundation. His recent creation -- the "Push Button House" -- is an art installation of a "home" built inside a shipping container with mechanized walls that open like a blossoming flower.

Used containers can be purchased for $1,500 to $2,500 and can be modified to include insulation, lighting and other amenities. For instance, you can buy a used 40 foot container for $1,800 through companies such as OnSite Storage. If you want to buy a customized container with lighting, heating, insulation, and air conditioning, it could cost $7-13,000. Another option is to rent shipping containers for storage. According to Hector in Sales, the containers are rented from $150 a month, plus delivery charges, $300 and up, depending on location. They have offices nationwide, including Long Beach, California.

http://www.onsitestorage.com/?gclid=CLTi7-aE3pICFRpOagodHEFP-A

Other companies...

http://www.lot-ek.com/

http://logicalhomes.com/prelaunch.htm

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2007/01/really_its_a_ca.php

http://www.demariadesign.com/