Thursday, December 11, 2008

Shipping Container House Recycled - Where is the INNOVATION since?

I just reconnected the .5TB hard drive with all the family photos. I was looking at Jax and how he was even smaller than Suby is now and thought about the detail, colors and textures of the Container House.

I got an email back in September from Scott Benson, namesake of our son Subasio Scott Yuen, saying that there was an article in the SJ Mercury news about the new "Container House" concept that would be exhibited. Honestly, don't architectural school graduates have anything NEW to offer? Should they expect a bit more out of their teachers? I built mine in 2002! Six years ago and these "experts" are just coming around now?

WHERE IS THE INNOVATION? I do not fault them for using shipping containers. I fault them for not bringing anything NEW to the table. I learned so much from building mine. They could make it greener. NOT money green but ecologically green. What I see is the architectural equivalent of moving the coffee holder on a 2007 Ford Expedition and calling it a 2008 model. How disappointing.


UPDATE.  So I get an email forwarded from my old friend Fred Romley,  a realtor at Houlihan Lawrence in New York.  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/realestate/01njzo.html?emc=eta1
The architects are at it again.  Hummm.  Better!  But what about the the livability?  Style? The Container offers up a lot of opportunity for style and detail that looks like it is totally missed.

See Live The Box http://studio.njit.edu/LiveTheBox/Resources.html

Note: This is a slideshow from Picasa Web Albums Embeded into the blog. Not a movie!

2 comments:

radu_addmall said...

more pictures with container house
www.pro-container.com

Tressa Sanders said...

I agree. I'm getting closer to building my own home using containers and I'm no engineer but there has to be more to it than a building that looks like you stacked a bunch of containers on top of each other. One of the most rewarding aspects of building my own home for me is being forced to look at my current usage of space, water and energy. It all goes hand in hand.