RE: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

[don]

Small rooms and dwellings set the mind on the right path, large ones cause it to go astray
Leonardo da Vinci

Who knew?

[shiny!]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

Nice!

I know quite a few retirees who live permanently in their RVs. The layouts and storage designs in those things are ingenious.

In my own mobile home I increased my kitchen functionality a great deal by getting rid of the 4-burner range/oven, replacing it with more counter-space and under-counter storage. I now cook with a portable induction cooktop like the one shown in the video, and a countertop oven that can be pushed out of the way when not in use. Consequently, my gas and electric bills have gone down considerably.

[touchring]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

Nice!

I know quite a few retirees who live permanently in their RVs. The layouts and storage designs in those things are ingenious.

In my own mobile home I increased my kitchen functionality a great deal by getting rid of the 4-burner range/oven, replacing it with more counter-space and under-counter storage. I now cook with a portable induction cooktop like the one shown in the video, and a countertop oven that can be pushed out of the way when not in use. Consequently, my gas and electric bills have gone down considerably.

Do you know this is one of the best way to pump up price per sq foot and valuation. This is one of the fraudulent methods used by certain governments in Asia to jack up land pricing.

[photon555]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

Yes who receives the savings of the reduced size. It could be a great benefit for people who want this, or it could be another debacle like timeshares.

[shiny!]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

Do you know this is one of the best way to pump up price per sq foot and valuation. This is one of the fraudulent methods used by certain governments in Asia to jack up land pricing.

I don't understand. Could you elaborate?

[don]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

box 'em . . ..

pre-owned housing stock

The first U.S. multi-family condo built of used shipping containers is slated to break ground in Detroit early next year.
Strong, durable and portable, shipping containers stack easily and link together like Legos. About 25 million of these 20-by-40 feet multicolored boxes move through U.S. container ports a year, hauling children's toys, flat-screen TVs, computers, car parts, sneakers and sweaters.

But so much travel takes its toll, and eventually the containers wear out and are retired. That's when architects and designers, especially those with a "green" bent, step in to turn these cast-off boxes into student housing in Amsterdam, artists' studios, emergency shelters, health clinics, office buildings.

Despite an oft-reported glut of unused cargo containers lying idle around U.S. ports and ship yards - estimates have ranged from 700,000 to 2 million - the Intermodal Steel Building Units and Container Homes Association puts the number closer to 12,000, including what's sold on Craigslist and eBay.

Joel Egan, co-founder of HyBrid Architecture in Seattle, which has built cottages and office buildings from shipping containers for close to a decade and coined the term " cargotecture" to describe this method of construction, warns that although containers can be bought for as little as $2,500, they shouldn't be seen as a low-cost housing solution.

"Ninety-five percent of the cost still remains," he says.

Here's a few recent North American projects - including the new condo complex - where the shipping container takes center stage:

Exceptional Green Living on Rosa Parks, Detroit: Container to Condo
This 20-unit, four-story condo complex consisting of 93 stacked cargo containers - the first U.S. multi-family residence to be built from these discarded vessels - has been in the works for four years. Tabled when the national real estate market shattered, the project is now scheduled to break ground early next year in midtown Detroit. The units will come rigged with ductless heating and air systems, tankless water heaters and other energy-saving systems. "We're putting money into these energy efficiencies so that the tenant has reduced energy costs," says Leslie Horn, CEO of Three Squared, the project's developer. "And we can build in less than half the time."

The Sunset Cargotecture House, Seattle: Home Sweet Container
Image Credit: Photo by Thomas J. Story, Sunset Publishing Corp. Built and designed by HyBrid Architecture as the Sunset magazine Idea House 2011, this 192-square-foot solar-powered backyard container cottage is not even half the size of a New York City studio apartment.
Still, it manages to pack in a galley kitchen and micro bathroom with a ceiling-mounted showerhead - the floor's redwood slats hide a drain - and can sleep up to four (a bed unfolds from the wall, a couch converts, another bed can be added). But given the close quarters, it's probably best if everyone's related.

Cinco Camp, Brewster County, Texas: Light on the Land
Image Credit: Hester + Hardaway Five freestanding cargo containers lined up and cinched together on a 3,000-acre ranch in the rugged, rocky high desert mountains of West Texas reduce life to its basics: One container holds a living room; two house bedrooms and bathrooms; another a kitchen and eating area, while the last is for storage.
Minimalism was the goal here. "It was more about the arrangement of the boxes. Most architects see those containers, and they want to manipulate them too much and cut them all up," says Mark Wellen, who designed Cinco Camp for Roger Black, a former Rolling Stone and New York Times art director who'd grown sick of the Hamptons.
Stripped of their paint and topped with large roof canopies for shade, each box sits off the ground on short stilts. "There's rattlesnakes, scorpions, spiders, all kinds of bugs," says Wellen. "We made a conscious effort to get it off the ground."
Weirdly enough, a major east-west railroad runs through this middle-of-nowhere terrain three to five times a day, its long, distant cars loaded with shipping containers, a regular reminder from where this home came.

The Box Office, Providence, R.I.: Lego Land
Image Credit: Nat Rea Rust-tinted brown wasn't the look the Box Office designers were going for. This three-story, 12,000-square-foot complex, which sits like a child's Lego dome in a post-industrial section of Providence, is the largest office building in the United States made exclusively of cargo containers.
"The building is made of 140 tons of recycled steel, but it's very difficult for a green building to have an identity," says Peter Case, who developed and helped design the Box Office. "The bright paint, the solar panels on top get the message across that this is a green building."
Case abandoned plans for a conventional office complex when the economy faltered and instead bought 35 shipping containers. But, he says, with construction costs at $1.6 million, the containers didn't really save him money.
"A shipping container doesn't want to be a building," Case explains. "So you have to do quite a bit of gymnastics that cost money." But the Box Office is four times more energy efficient than a typical office building, and that's where Case says he'll see savings. "There's no way for air to come in or out of a shipping container," he says, "unless you want it to."

Muvbox, Montreal: Take a Break in a Crate
Image Credit: Courtesy of Muvbox An art object by night and a snack cart by day, this pop-up lobster shack opened in the Old Port of Montreal two years ago. Motorized and illuminated by solar-powered batteries, Muvbox opens and closes in about 90 seconds - the side panels unfold to become terraces with table-seating.
The brainchild of Daniel Noiseaux, the design-obsessed restaurateur who brought wood-oven pizza to Montreal 31 years ago, Muvbox was inspired by the horse-drawn snack carts and old-style canteens of centuries past, and Adam Kalkin's Push Button House installation of 2006.
While Montreal was first, Muvboxes have since surfaced in Paris, Toronto and New York's Times Square, where the lobster frescoes yield to black-and-white stripes, and the menu changes from lobster to hot dogs and bagels. A movable feast indeed.

DeKalb Market, Brooklyn, N.Y.: A Portable Souk
Image Credit: Eddy Valante A cluster of about 60 food and Etsy-style arts and clothing vendors operating out of shipping containers on a vacant Brooklyn lot, the DeKalb Market is no Dordoy Bazaar in Kyrgyzstan or Seven-Kilometer Market in Ukraine. The first U.S. container project of U.K.-based developer Urban Space - most famous for its Container City complexes in London - DeKalb dismantled in October to make way for a long-stalled housing-retail development as its planners continue to negotiate for a new location. Good thing those containers are so portable.

Aprisa Mexican Cuisine, Portland, Ore.: A Movable Taqueria
Image Credit: Courtesy of Kirk Lance Having had two restaurants fail on him, Kirk Lance vowed if he ever opened another he'd have to be able to pick it up and move it if it started to backslide.
As he drove down the interstate in Oregon, where Lance had moved and had his eco-conscience raised, he noticed "giant yards … with hundreds, possibly thousands" of shipping containers stacked up and suddenly saw his next restaurant. He bought one of these cargo holders, for about $3,000.
"It was the culmination of sustainability and recycling and portability all coming together," Lance says. And then there's the romance of it: "This shipping container has traveled all over the world," says Lance. "It's shipped tons of who knows what, and for me it's kind of intriguing that it gets to have a second life."
Turning the retired cargo vessel into a taqueria wasn't that hard, says Lance. Cutting out windows, spraying in the foam insulation, "anybody with a little construction background can probably figure those things out," he says.
But getting the permits, the blueprints, the structural engineering reports through the state of Oregon took four years, and added "a ton" to the cost, Lance says. "What kept me going was if I could build one of these things and it works well, I could just copy the blueprints and build 100 of them," or pick up and move.

The Shipping Container House, Nederland, Colo.: Still 'Cargotecture'
Image Credit: Braden Gunem True, the Shipping Container House is not all shipping containers, but by definition it's still cargotecture. The two containers that sandwich the main living area house an office and a bedroom in this 1,500-square-foot mountain home. Designed by Studio H:T in Boulder, Colo., for "a conscientious client who believes in living small and recycling," the solar-powered house can operate entirely off-grid.

[touchring]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

I don't understand. Could you elaborate?

The real estate market can be manipulated, just like the packaged supermarket food you buy. The volume of stuff in the package get smaller, but the price remains the same. For real estate, the price per sq foot rises, contributing to a rising real estate market statistics.

Imagine a builder advertises, a brand new 3 bedroom and 2 baths for $150K, for a 600 sq ft mickey mouse apartment. $150K may sound like an incredible deal for a brand new 3 bed 2 bathroom, but price per sq ft, it is $250. The consumer gets ripped off.

[shiny!]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

The real estate market can be manipulated, just like the packaged supermarket food you buy. The volume of stuff in the package get smaller, but the price remains the same. For real estate, the price per sq foot rises, contributing to a rising real estate market statistics.

Imagine a builder advertises, a brand new 3 bedroom and 2 baths for $150K, for a 600 sq ft mickey mouse apartment. $150K may sound like an incredible deal for a brand new 3 bed 2 bathroom, but price per sq ft, it is $250. The consumer gets ripped off.

I see what you mean. Thanks.

There is to some extent a re-inventing of the wheel going on with small-space living. Mobile homes, Park Model RVs and travel trailers have been perfecting this for some time, for much less $$$ than these fancy new apartments. I live in a 54x14 mobile home. All around me are Park Models that average about 12x35 sq ft. People buy used ones for a few thousand $$$ and live quite well in them.

[touchring]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

I see what you mean. Thanks.

There is to some extent a re-inventing of the wheel going on with small-space living. Mobile homes, Park Model RVs and travel trailers have been perfecting this for some time, for much less $$$ than these fancy new apartments. I live in a 54x14 mobile home. All around me are Park Models that average about 12x35 sq ft. People buy used ones for a few thousand $$$ and live quite well in them.

You would want to get hold of a city apartment if you could right away because I can see that prices will rise over the next couple of years. Money from overseas will rush into US real estate. This is just the beginning.

[shiny!]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

You would want to get hold of a city apartment if you could right away because I can see that prices will rise over the next couple of years. Money from overseas will rush into US real estate. This is just the beginning.

You might be right, but an apartment is not for me. I hate feeling like I'm living in a beehive. Just look at how things fall apart in dense urban areas like NY when a disaster hits, and how mobs behave on Black Friday. Apartment living is not where I want to be.

Personally, I'm more likely to buy an RV or Park Model and park it on some land with utility hookups and room for a large garden. Thinking of moving someplace with a more temperate climate, more rainfall and more water... some place where I can live without air conditioning. A place like San Marcos or Austin, TX strikes the right balance.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

Thinking of moving someplace with a more temperate climate, more rainfall and more water... some place where I can live without air conditioning. A place like San Marcos or Austin, TX strikes the right balance.

shiny!, if you're thinking about moving to San Marcos or Austin, you'd better have a high tolerance for heat if you're thinking about going without air conditioning. During the summers, I find Austin to be about as hot as Houston.

I must admit, if one can afford it, the climate in the Silicon Valley area really is quite nice. You can get away with not having air conditioning and only be mildly uncomfortable maybe one or two weeks total.

[davidstvz]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

Imagining myself ever living in such a small space is kind of depressing. You often see it in futuristic movies where the designers have thought a bit about how population growth might effect the use of living space. Example: the tiny living module used by Corban Dallas (a broke taxi driver) in The 5th Element. I'm sure there are plenty of others as well.

[LorenS]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

If a container is "worn out" why is it still good enough to build into housing? Steel rusts, I can see there being a big problem with these in the future if they're not properly corrosion proofed.

It's one thing to buy one to store your lawn mower and garden tools, vs living in one. I'd imagine getting them well insulated will be a challenge as well.

[LorenS]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

My in-laws sold their house and rental property to buy an RV to live in. It financially devastated them. The RV was depreciating faster than they paid off the note and by the time you factor in parking fees and gas it's a really expensive option.

As Sandy showed, the smaller your dwelling the more dependent you are on your supply chain.

No thanks!!!

Even sardines aren't packed like that until after they are dead.

[gwynedd1]

Re: the 220 Sq Ft Saber Tooth Developer

The real estate market can be manipulated, just like the packaged supermarket food you buy. The volume of stuff in the package get smaller, but the price remains the same. For real estate, the price per sq foot rises, contributing to a rising real estate market statistics.

Imagine a builder advertises, a brand new 3 bedroom and 2 baths for $150K, for a 600 sq ft mickey mouse apartment. $150K may sound like an incredible deal for a brand new 3 bed 2 bathroom, but price per sq ft, it is $250. The consumer gets ripped off.

When the economy comes around they have to reverse it and sell you more , which was what it was before but at a higher price.


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