From minimal living to multi-story and super maxed out, shipping container homes have turned from a niche sustainable material into a fashionable design statement.  Here are 5 unique shipping container homes seen on the Weird Homes Tour.

KAN House – New Orleans

In the historic Irish Channel neighborhood, you’d be surprised to find a collection of 7 shipping containers situated among the shotgun houses. Located within eyesight of the Port of New Orleans, these containers aren’t part of a lost shipment, but instead are a fun, forward thinking home designed by Anne and Kicker Kalozdi who were looking to think outside, or rather inside, the box.

Converting old shipping containers into homes is not a new idea, but it has only recently emerged as a practice in NOLA. Shipping containers are a natural fit for a city where hundreds of thousands of the units pass through the Port of New Orleans each year.

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Three Story Cargo Home – Detroit

You could argue that North Corktown is one of the hottest and most up and coming locations in the city.  Leslie Horn (with her company Three Squared) is on ground floor of the evolution. Given the surplus of international shipping containers (it’s cheaper to build new containers than move empty ones), they are carrying the load in reuse and repurposing of the hearty structures.

Their out-of-the-box thinking literally leverages ‘the box.’ It gathers and assembles containers to bring us colorful and charismatic buildings that challenge the conventional ‘stick and brick’ style homes. The best part is that they can also be assembled in less than a day.

While most people think minimal when it comes to shipping container homes, Leslie’s home went the opposite direction with a super-sized 2,400 sq ft standing tall at 3 stories high. It is a cool, modern and efficient building that has been featured on HGTV and USA Today.  Come join Leslie with a home that someday may not be so weird in the future.

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Rancho Burrito – Austin

In East Austin it causes people to stop, stare and get out of their cars. Is it a business, a farm, an experiment, a home? Is that a man welding in the July heat? In truth you can say  YES to all of the above. Homes built out of shipping containers are a newer way to recycle a very basic item used everyday in our world. They are big, metal objects used to haul good across the world. But done right..they can make deceivingly cool homes. Come take a look inside one and learn how it’s all put together by it’s owner.

P.S. Did we mention it has a wood burning hot tub? That fits three people during SXSW according to its owner…..

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McGowen Container House – Houston

It was always a long time dream of Will Breaux to design and build his own home. For many of those years that dream consisted of using shipping containers in the construction, a new idea at that time. Now that Will’s McGowen street home is nearly complete, containers are becoming a more common material. But while most container homes go minimal, Will has gone maximal, incorporating 11 containers to create 3 stories and over 2,500 sq feet of living space. It has been a true labor of love with Will doing much of the construction work himself.

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Shotgun Container House – New Orleans

The 750 sq ft shipping container home of Seth Rodewald-Bates & Elisabeth Davies is the result of the perfectly weird marriage of New Orleans and West Texas inspirations.  The story begins in weird and wonderful Marfa, Texas, where Seth and Elisabeth first met.  Marfa is famous for the large scale art installations of Donald Judd.  His minimal aesthetic and style inspired for the home’s style.  And what better place for this home than New Orleans with it’s traditional long and narrow shotgun style houses. With it’s historic port, New Orleans has seen quite a few shipping containers pass through her city limits.

Seth and Elisabeth built their home along with a little help from friends and family over the course of a year and a half.  Inside, they live minimally as one would expect with exception to their extensive book collection. Book topics cover everything from sustainability to the culinary arts.

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Do YOU have a super shipping container home?