Shipping Container Designs - Even for Malls, Hotels

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Driving recently through the village of Salmon Arm in rural BC, Canada, I was struck by the sight of several steel containers. Just a couple of hours earlier, I researched online for outstanding design ideas, using these “ship containers”.  

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I went into the elegant office, built of ship containers and talked with a nice lady, who explained me they sell brand-new containers, custom-built, but also used ones: “Almost any structure you can envision can be built using shipping containers. We built more than 600 modular structures over the years and most of them have been custom design builds.”  I asked for a price list and was surprised how inexpensive they really are, starting from $3,000 or 4,000 to 8,000 for new ones. 
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BoxPark, London, England
London's first pop-up shopping mall made completely from shipping containers. Located next to the Underground Shoreditch station to the north-east of central London, the mini shopping center is convenient, pedestrian-friendly, and packed with popular stores. The stores are compact in their own right, taking up only 1-3 containers - a refreshing rebut to ginormous vanilla shopping malls wrapped in endless parking lots. An upper pavilion lets shopper stretch out a bit, and the remaining container shops are clustered to create a few gathering spaces.

The dark grey mall has a low-key aesthetic that lets the retailer’s windows and interiors do the bidding for attention. Functional lighting and lettering above each shop indicates the world of goods inside.
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Hamburg, Germany
Stephen Williams Associates  designed a very interesting eclectic hotel inspired by sailing and shipping. In the amazing décor shipping containers, ropes, rotors and other elements from the shipping industry were used to create the impression of a raw, industrial shipping  warehouse. 25Hours HafenCity Hotel has each room decorated to look like a cabin from a ship.  
Designed as a home away from home, the cabins and all of the rooms at the 25hours Hotel Hamburg HafenCity are warm and cosy. Features and materials inspired by the harbour and shipbuilding are interpreted with tongue-in-cheek humour and held together with sailors’ yarns: 25 seafarers from around the world tell real-life stories of dangerous voyages, romantic encounters, violent storms and painful farewells. Anecdotal accessories and objects refer to these adventures, which are told in full in each cabin’s logbook.
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• 170 cabins
• meeting space for up to 200 guests
• club floor to relax
• heimat kitchen+bar
• habour sauna
• mare kiosk
• free of charge wifi
• imac workstations at radio room
• free of charge mini and bike rental
• underground parking with access to the hotel
• the hotel compact for download

http://www.25hours-hotels.com/en/hafencity/home/home.html

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