I'm an european architectural masterstudent and I am getting my degree at the end of june. I come from a quite small city and personaly I would love to go work as an architect in a mid-big size firm, designing bigger (public) buildings like hotels, musea etc rather then residential houses. So probably I will be moving to a bigger city,the place i'll land into does not matter for me, can be the United States, Dubai, China, Thailand, ...
When moving to a big (world)city there is the cost of your stay, which is normaly the biggest cost of all... It might be a quite random question and I'm really thining outside of the box, but I was thinking, what if I build my own house using containers? There are enough examples on the internet that this can be a good, cheap way of living. For the bigger picture; I would like to build my own 2-3 container house here in Europe, put it on a ship to a city I would want to work, in example somewhere around New York. I dont mind to take a 1 hour drive by train everytime to work and back so I can live outside the city. But how realistic is this? How about the land I need to buy? There are probably rules about how your house looks like on the streetside, no?
Any opinions? Ideas? Suggestions?
Anything is more than welcome!
Kind regards!
s=r*(theta)
Oct 20, 15 6:00 pm
Gud luck wit that
Breaker breaker over and out
haruki
Oct 20, 15 7:17 pm
There is an architectural designer in Los Angeles named Jennifer Siegal of Office of Mobile Design who if I'm not mistaken lives in a container building of her design. The last I heard she had it parked near the beach in Venice Beach California. You might want to google her contact info and research what she has done. You might even be able to talk to her directly for advice.
If you are thinking of shipping your house across the ocean perhaps you might consider simplifying things by living in a boat instead. A lot of people live in coastal cities inexpensively by living in a boat that they keep docked in a marina. In Los Angeles people live on boats in what is called the Marina Del Rey. Dubai and New York are also on the water. This could work in those cities too I imagine.
no_form
Oct 20, 15 7:57 pm
So you don't want to pay to live in a world city. But- you are going to purchase two containers, completely retrofit them with a bathroom, kitchen, and HVAC. They will comply with local building codes, in your example New York State. Then you will pay to ship them across the Atlantic. Then you will find a legal site to deploy said containers and have them inspected and permitted before you move in. And to do this within one hour of NYC. are you a millionaire?
no_form
Oct 20, 15 8:04 pm
You could buy an RV and park it on public streets here in LA. Lots of homeless people do that. Not joking.
JeromeS
Oct 20, 15 9:08 pm
and to follow-up on rob_c; If you are a millionaire, why do you want to live in a shipping container?
StarchitectAlpha
Oct 20, 15 9:14 pm
I had the container idea a bit ago for developing small scale unwanted lots cheaply this is what stopped me.
#1 containers are more expensive than typical construction once you start cutting into them to provide Windows doors ect. The walls are also structural so you have to reinforce it wherever you cut an opening.
#2 land -most Americans drive an hour to work which means if you are actually trying to find cheap land you are going to be needing to look 2+ hours away one direction, not joking.
#3 you will still have to pay development fees, school sewer ect and permit fees totaling into the 10's of thousands why? Because all the cities are bankrupt and are desperate for revenue any way they can get it. Also you listed some of the largest cities so it's not like your moving to some dump in Kansas, your talking about the suburbs of New York that don't let people just plop a piece of trash down and live in it.
no_form
Oct 20, 15 9:53 pm
Gotta love the European mentality though. An hour train ride in the OPs mind is 1. A burden and 2. Where land is cheap. OP in the US the conditions you described are highly sought after by people here and fetch premium prices.
midlander
Oct 20, 15 11:01 pm
as others have noted steel shipping containers arent so economical.
have you considered cardboard boxes? they are easy to procure, cheap to transport, and you dont really need a permit to place one. If you spend more money for the white ones you can customize the facade pattern with sharpie markers. I did mine with yellow hexagons to give it a beehive concept that relates to the organic structure of nature, and its beautiful. I will sell you the pattern if you want.
Hello Archinect!
I'm an european architectural masterstudent and I am getting my degree at the end of june.
I come from a quite small city and personaly I would love to go work as an architect in a mid-big size firm, designing bigger (public) buildings like hotels, musea etc rather then residential houses. So probably I will be moving to a bigger city,the place i'll land into does not matter for me, can be the United States, Dubai, China, Thailand, ...
When moving to a big (world)city there is the cost of your stay, which is normaly the biggest cost of all...
It might be a quite random question and I'm really thining outside of the box, but I was thinking, what if I build my own house using containers? There are enough examples on the internet that this can be a good, cheap way of living.
For the bigger picture; I would like to build my own 2-3 container house here in Europe, put it on a ship to a city I would want to work, in example somewhere around New York. I dont mind to take a 1 hour drive by train everytime to work and back so I can live outside the city.
But how realistic is this? How about the land I need to buy? There are probably rules about how your house looks like on the streetside, no?
Any opinions? Ideas? Suggestions?
Anything is more than welcome!
Kind regards!
Gud luck wit that
Breaker breaker over and out
There is an architectural designer in Los Angeles named Jennifer Siegal of Office of Mobile Design who if I'm not mistaken lives in a container building of her design. The last I heard she had it parked near the beach in Venice Beach California. You might want to google her contact info and research what she has done. You might even be able to talk to her directly for advice.
If you are thinking of shipping your house across the ocean perhaps you might consider simplifying things by living in a boat instead. A lot of people live in coastal cities inexpensively by living in a boat that they keep docked in a marina. In Los Angeles people live on boats in what is called the Marina Del Rey. Dubai and New York are also on the water. This could work in those cities too I imagine.
So you don't want to pay to live in a world city. But- you are going to purchase two containers, completely retrofit them with a bathroom, kitchen, and HVAC. They will comply with local building codes, in your example New York State. Then you will pay to ship them across the Atlantic. Then you will find a legal site to deploy said containers and have them inspected and permitted before you move in. And to do this within one hour of NYC. are you a millionaire?
You could buy an RV and park it on public streets here in LA. Lots of homeless people do that. Not joking.
and to follow-up on rob_c; If you are a millionaire, why do you want to live in a shipping container?
I had the container idea a bit ago for developing small scale unwanted lots cheaply this is what stopped me.
#1 containers are more expensive than typical construction once you start cutting into them to provide Windows doors ect. The walls are also structural so you have to reinforce it wherever you cut an opening.
#2 land -most Americans drive an hour to work which means if you are actually trying to find cheap land you are going to be needing to look 2+ hours away one direction, not joking.
#3 you will still have to pay development fees, school sewer ect and permit fees totaling into the 10's of thousands why? Because all the cities are bankrupt and are desperate for revenue any way they can get it. Also you listed some of the largest cities so it's not like your moving to some dump in Kansas, your talking about the suburbs of New York that don't let people just plop a piece of trash down and live in it.
Gotta love the European mentality though. An hour train ride in the OPs mind is 1. A burden and 2. Where land is cheap. OP in the US the conditions you described are highly sought after by people here and fetch premium prices.
as others have noted steel shipping containers arent so economical.
have you considered cardboard boxes? they are easy to procure, cheap to transport, and you dont really need a permit to place one. If you spend more money for the white ones you can customize the facade pattern with sharpie markers. I did mine with yellow hexagons to give it a beehive concept that relates to the organic structure of nature, and its beautiful. I will sell you the pattern if you want.
Tents man. Tents.