We’re used to Storage Hunters showing us that weird things are found inside shipping containers and the like, but perhaps this is the first time you’ve heard that shipping containers themselves can get up to mischief. Today, there are even shipping containers going to space; where will they go next?
1) Restaurants and Cafés
Lately, to avoid construction costs, more people have been using shipping containers or used site cabins as the foundations of their businesses. For some, this translates to hosting a restaurant or café from the depths of a shipping container.
Alongside high-flying brands such as Starbucks, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, there are plenty of independent restaurants and cafés expanding with shipping containers too.
2) In a Skyscraper
Shipping containers have been reaching new heights lately, as skyscrapers have been extending their reach through the use of shipping containers. For some skyscrapers, however, you might need to look a little more closely to find that they are made entirely from containers.
Currently, this design is only a concept yet to be constructed, but it could make a world of difference for those people living in the slums of Mumbai – a problem which this concept was designed to solve.
3) Emergency Hospital
You would be quite confused if you woke up from an ordeal to find yourself in a hospital, but you might be more confused upon leaving the room to find that the hospital was a shipping container the entire time. Shipping containers truly are malleable spaces that can suit a great range of purposes.
4) In a Park or Field
A new art project has dumped shipping containers worldwide in an effort to bring people from different cultures and places closer together. The idea is that when one walks into the special golden shipping containers called ‘portals’, they are confronted with a wall-sized screen which displays a real-time video from a shipping container located somewhere else in the world. This is supposed to give the illusion that the people exist in the same space, when in fact they are both in identical shipping containers scattered across the world.
5) Under the Sea
ITOS estimated that somewhere in the region of thousands of shipping containers are lost at sea each year. The loss of containers is often considered a problem due to the toxicity of container paint being spread around our oceans. On the other hand, shipping containers can become ecological sanctuaries for some creatures.
In the video below, you can see how one shipping container has become a habitat for sea-life that prefers to live on harder ground:
6) In Space
The container to beat all others, however, is the one that made it to space. Somewhere up there, amongst the moon and stars, a steel storage container has reached new heights. That’s more than most humans can achieve in a lifetime!
Unfortunately, the shipping container that made it was a somewhat less impressive smaller mock-up of your typical shipping container, but nonetheless, it is a lot of fun to watch this dinky container ascend to heights never seen before by the likes of a shipping container.
In this video, you can see the tiny box float its way up above houses, clouds, and finally Earth’s stratosphere where you can see the curvature of our planet:
And there you have it, six strange places that you might find a shipping container. Next time you are in a restaurant, café, skyscraper or hospital, take a moment and ask yourself whether you could actually be in a shipping container without having realised. Alternatively, you could seek out some of the most remote shipping containers by diving beneath the waves or taking to the stars.
Alternatively, you could cast your gaze a little closer to home and purchase or hire your own shipping container from us. We offer both new and used portable buildings in London so if you’re looking for a storage container to put wherever you please, you should contact us for more information.
