Model shipping container home: best thing since full-sized shipping container home

"What," I ask you, "could possibly be better than a shipping container that's been converted into a house?" "Nothing," you say. "There's nothing better. Nothing at all. Not even iPad mini" "I know," I nod with smug condescension bordering on the zen-like, "I thought so too." But that was yesterday. Today, courtesy of Module R, there are models of shipping container houses. They're big, too, though thankfully not so big that they won't fit inside your actual shipping container house (stop me if this is getting too meta).

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If you're not familiar with the trend of converting shipping containers into houses, you have presumably been living in some sort of box. (And not a good box: that would be a shipping container.) Not just houses, mind; architects have been designing B&Bs, hotels, classrooms, and mad multi-container geometric forms made from shipping containers, too. Sometimes, they even get built.

Module R has created its model shipping container house, perhaps on the assumption that not everyone that would like a shipping container house (or even that likes to pretend for a moment that they would like a shipping container house) actually has the means to have and keep a shipping container house. And by means I mean space as much as money. Those of us lucky enough to own land in the current era tend to have actual houses (not made out of shipping containers) stuck right in the middle.

That being the case you'd have to ask a friend with a shipping container house whether you could put your shipping container house on top of hers, and alas those sorts of friends are hard to come by – even on Facebook.

For all of those people, which, let's face it, is basically everyone on Earth, Module R has made its model shipping container house, which it actually calls a model container home.

At this point you're probably asking two questions: what does it cost, and how big is it? To answer the second question first, think doll's house rather than toy train carriage. The model containers, or "pods," measure 20 x 8.5 x 8 in (508 x 216 x 203 mm). A grass-colored "landscape base" can be had to pop it on, which is much bigger still. There appear to be four different pods available: a deck set, a kitchen pod, a living room pod, and a master suite pod. The idea, though, is that you buy all of them, and play architect yourself, arranging them on your landscape base in the manner of your choosing.

As to your first question, individual pods, which, it has to be said, do appear to have been designed with considerable attention to detail (the art over the bed in the master suite pod is a particularly nice touch) range from US250 to $720 in price, but a set can be had for $2,450. That may sound expensive, but we wouldn't want just anyone buying model shipping container houses, would we?

What do you mean you don't want one?

Source: Module R, via NOTCOT