撒丁岛的DIY集装箱住房

For some time designboom has been planning to transfer our office during the summertime months from the bustling city of milan to the seasides of sardinia (sardegna), an island off the western coast of italy. after all these years of publishing articles
on exciting experimental and sustainable architecture, we've undertaken our own DIY shipping container home project, featuring adaptable living and work spaces. we wanted to share our experience as a starting point for readers who might be interested in creating similar structures of their own!

There is a high demand for summer residences on sardinia, and in order to stop over-development of its coastal line and countryside, the government has adopted extremely rigid criteria for building permits. receiving construction permission is a long and difficult process, but one means of getting around the waiting period is the use of temporary and modular structures for housing. we envisioned a low impact dwelling, which could be placed on our ground without any planning permission, and ultimately integrated into a traditional permanent edifice once the proper legal permissions have been obtained.

The area features an outdoor kitchen and dining area, covered with a straw canopy, adjacent to two live-work container spaces.these are arranged such that their external doors may be opened out from the container and latched together,
creating a wall that protects the dining area from excess wind. all spaces feature opening or sliding glass doors installed within the container frame.

A separate shipping container serves as the bathroom, which has been fitted with a functioning toilet and shower.

In general it is a good thing to recycle materials that otherwise have no further use for their intended purpose. cargo shipping containers are used only 20 years for its original purpose, nowadays their life-span is even shorter. reason is that many asian economies have an export-oriented development strategy and we (europeans) are buying so much merchandise from these countries, primarily china. the imbalances in commercial relations (we export less) determine a situation where it’s too expensive to ship empty containers back to the their origin (it’s cheaper to buy new containers). the result is an extremely high surplus of empty, used shipping containers in europe's ports...