Export yourself

Like an endangered species, the Green movement is all the rage; Wal-Mart is marketing it and venture capitalists are investing in it. But it had better be more than that; it had better become the movement to end all movements or we will all be facing what Al Gore calls "an inconvenient truth." Contemporary designers and architects have sought to adapt domestic environments within new parameters. The physical aspects of being human — the need to eat and sleep — will never change, but there are global challenges to the prescriptive notion that a home must have a kitchen, a living room, a dining room.

The work of internationally regarded architect Sean Godsell, the Mobile Dwelling Unit (MDU) utilizes recycled shipping containers to provide temporary emergency or relief housing. MDU is based on the concept that, around the world, there could be colonies of standard container docks where an urban nomad population could arrive and plug in its module houses. The Container Home Kit is a prefab house in which containers can be linked to make a 2 or 3-bedroom house. According to Sean, the short answer to the question of shipping container’s sudden appearance in the spotlight is a straightforward one: Because they are there, and there are so many of them. The abundance of shipping containers is a byproduct of a trade imbalance that means that many more arrive in Canada than leaves.

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