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Walter Scott Perry, a Los Angeles-based architect and a principle of Ecotechdesign, built and showcased what he describes as the first permitted shipping container house in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree in 2010. The hybrid house consists of cargo containers and pre-engineered steel building components that can be erected and combined at the site, much like a manufactured home. Built in collaboration with the subsidiary, Ecotechbuild, the San Bernardino County project was approved and permits were issued in one week, according to Perry.
Back of house view of Walter Scott Perry's container hybrid home near Joshua Tree. The container hybrid was built and showcased in 2010.
Vans Off the Wall Skatepark and Jack's Garage in Orange County as built from shipping containers.
Craig Rapoza, chief operating officer, IPME
IPME officials at the grand opening of Downtown Container Park in Las Vegas in 2013.
They’re big, boxy and made of steel.
Resilient, too: They withstand wind, fire and earthquakes.
Stacked on rail cars, ships and the trailer of flatbed trucks, the shipping containers that stream through Inland Southern California can be purchased after use for $3,000 or less.
Carbon-neutral advocates and futuristic, out-of-the-box thinkers see customized containers for cozy home living as the next wave of affordable living across the Inland area.
Walter Perry Scott, an architect and principal of Echotechdesign in Los Angeles, in fact, introduced what’s been described as the first permitted shipping container home in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree in 2010.
IPME, the California firm that brought Downtown Container Park to Las Vegas, Waldorf School to Orange County and Vans Off the Wall Skatepark & Jack’s Garage to Huntington Beach using new and repurposed shipping containers and multifunctional modular cubes, has a duplex in Redondo Beach on its architectural drawing board.
“We plan to break ground on it in six months,” Craig Rapoza, of IPME, said.
Last week, two Inland businessmen affiliated with the start-up Lumina Homes LLC said they are confident they have cracked the code to turn steel shipping containers from the Port of Long Beach into cozy, affordable homes.
Their model, which was set in a side yard of a rural residential property in Hesperia, has window cut-outs, a kitchen sink, stove and full bath. Wrapped with insulating materials, it has an electric panel and is plumbed for a tankless water heater. Alex Sanchez and his business partner, Syed Rizvi, have also created a separate structure made of lightweight, steel-framed polystyrene panels to add a second floor or add rooms to the container.
But as it stands now, the project is still in development mode.
Lumina Homes does not yet have a city business license or a showroom in a properly zoned spot.
Dave Reno, Hesperia’s principal planner, also said shipping containers are not a recognized architectural style, and do not meet the city’s minimum construction or architectural standards. Because a number of building codes have to be resolved, shipping container homes would not be permitted in Hesperia, Reno said.
“We are working through this,” Rizvi said, and expressed a view that the issues will be resolved in future meetings.
Permits for these architecturally exciting projects are not easy to get, Rapoza said.
Rapoza, a principal IPME owner with CEO Bill Hinchliff, said residential container home construction is slow to come out of the gate because permitting is tricky. “Most cities and towns have never seen construction with a container, so they don’t know how to address building codes and adapt it.”
Once the adaptations are made, building the units can be costly.
“You might want to spend a nickel, but it costs 50 cents,” Rapoza said, explaining that the home that’s in design in Redondo Beach, once engineering and all other costs are factored in, could average $235 a square foot.
That’s higher than some tract-built homes, according to the 2014 National Building Cost Manual.
Perry, the architect of the hybrid house known as The Tim Palen Studio at Shadow Mountain near Joshua Tree, said his home was based on the Prius engineering concept and integrated steel framing systems with a solar home shading system, bolt-on module add-ons and graywater irrigation systems.
He said the 2,200-square-foot home cost a little more than $300,000 to build – that doesn’t include the cost to buy the land. That put construction costs and site work in the range of $155 per square foot. Built with a subsidiary, Ecotechbuild, Perry’s company sells kits for similar homes.
Container advocates see tremendous potential for global housing needs, disaster relief and affordable living alternatives in the U.S.
Laurence Pokras, an architect who worked with IPME on a 2013 trade show and has a company website, LNP Designs, said these units could be used to house the homeless, as well.
But even though shipping containers are a logistical reality in the region, Perry said it’s taking time to catch on.
“Interest in shipping container living, which is both practical and cool in both senses of the word, is great,” Perry said. “The follow-through is not.”
Interest wanes primarily when costs to get these custom homes approved and built are penciled out. By the time permits are pulled and costs are sorted out, Perry said the price to create a well-made, well-designed container hybrid home might not be much lower than a stick-built house.
Pokras shared another view. “I think the hurdles are there because this is taking away the wood guy’s business,” he said.
Luke Iseman, a California artist and entrepreneur who plopped a $2,300 used container on a West Oakland lot to create a do-it-yourself community to resolve San Francisco’s housing affordability crisis last year, has run into stiff opposition from the city.
Inspectors say the Iseman and co-founder Heather Stewart violated health and building codes for treating soil, setting up electrical wiring and retrofitting containers for a collection of shipping container homes without asking the city’s permission.
“We’ve faced a bunch of code hurdles,” Iseman said in a telephone interview, but vowed to press on. The dwellers were told to bring the neighborhood up to code, or leave. “We’re slowly but surely trying to do it as a start-up.”
For now, Rapoza said the real growth is in the commercial side of things.
Downtown Container Park, the multimillion-dollar project in Las Vegas, by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, has been called a playground for the senses: Made with with 72 systems, including 30 reconstructed shipping containers, the small-scale, walkable park offers music zones, entertainment areas, eco-friendly retail stores and eateries.
It’s the first park of its kind to have an elevator built inside a shipping container. And IPME officials say it’s the most-viewed container application project in the United States. And, it’s starting to generate wider interest.
“We’ve been solicited to so something similar in Brazil and Chile,” Rapoza said, so it’s only a matter of time before the momentum moves into the residential side of things.
Contact the writer: 951-368-9423 or dgruszecki@pe.com
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