Roundup: Astonishing Container Apartments Driving a New Lodging Trend (2)-Ehang Container House

5. Flexible Housing Apartment Hotel, UK

DSK Architects designed a new apartment hotel for a London neighborhood. To meet the trend toward flexible housing in central London, the project combines the feel of a boutique hotel with the private experience of an apartment, delivering adaptable spaces that can meet residents' needs for living, working, dining, and sleeping. The design prioritizes simplicity, robustness, and durability. The hotel features a five-story modular volume, with each room built from a 30-foot recycled shipping container. Its striking facade is welded from a series of steel fin-like elements that provide both privacy and shading. The multi-surface screen wall makes the building look different from different angles, giving it a shifting character. The insides of the fins are painted dark orange, echoing the weathering steel often used on shipping containers.

Each apartment window includes a simple, fixed high-performance double laminated glass unit, with a mesh pattern printed on the lower glass to protect privacy. The ground-floor reception and Unwined857 give local residents and pedestrians on Lower Marsh Street an uplifting leisure destination.

The simple, compact layout of the guest rooms optimizes function and experience, finished with premium natural wood and marble detailing. The kitchen is equipped with everyday appliances such as a dishwasher, sink, and microwave. The bedroom's upholstered wall also doubles as a TV wall. Soft gradient colors make the space feel more open, and a "tunnel effect" helps keep guests comfortable. A key design idea is keeping the space closely connected to the surrounding city: a semi-enclosed rear wall lets guests look out over the broad skyline of London's South Bank.

6. 4,200 sq m Container Apartments, South Africa

We have seen shipping-container buildings take many forms, and this one in Johannesburg, South Africa, is very straightforward: a six-story residential building made of 140 recycled containers stacked together.

The architects split the complex into two parts—one blue, one green—tilting outward to form a triangular courtyard between them. Residents move through the building along an open-air corridor that overlooks the courtyard and also serves as a shared balcony. The apartments range from 300 to 600 square feet, with open plans, reclaimed wood floors, and clean white walls. The containers' metal panels remain as the ceiling, giving the interiors an industrial feel.

Although the building stays true to container aesthetics, every unit has angled cuts that serve as cool corner windows and also create a herringbone pattern expressed on the facade.

7. Hilda L. Solis Care First Village, Los Angeles, USA

U.S. firm NAC Architecture and Bernards used shipping containers to build private apartments for people experiencing homelessness at a facility in Los Angeles. Hilda L. Solis Care First Village, formerly the Vignes Street Temporary Housing Project, sits on a 4.2-acre (1.7-hectare) site in downtown Los Angeles. The complex is named after Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis. The facility was delivered by the builder and construction-management company in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works. In 2019, as officials began exploring options to use the site for homeless housing, the plan changed. Reports put the number of people experiencing homelessness in the Los Angeles area at least at 8,333.

For the irregularly shaped site, the team conceived a series of single-story structures and a pair of multi-story buildings. Three different modular components were used: repurposed shipping containers, wood-framed prefabricated units, and mobile units. Modular elements that can be built off-site helped accelerate the schedule. The facility covers 5,946 square meters and was completed in six months. It provides 232 housing units plus a community building with a commercial kitchen, dining area, laundry facilities, and administrative space. The site also has landscaped courtyards, a dog park, and parking for staff and residents. The three-story building is made of stacked steel shipping crates.

The containers are stacked, fixed in place, and linked with attached open corridors and stairs for easy access to each unit. The buildings are painted white with bright yellow and orange accents. To make the containers livable, the team cut large windows and fully insulated the walls and ceilings. Each container holds two living units of 12.5 square meters. Apartments include a bed, microwave, mini-fridge, tablet, and private bathroom. The containers were refurbished by Crate, a California company. To help slow the spread of coronavirus and support residents' self-reliance, every unit in the complex has its own heating and ventilation system.

The facility opened in April 2021 and reached full occupancy the following month. According to Hilda Solis's website, the project cost $7,916,667 USD ($5,750,000 GBP), of which $7,083,333 USD ($5,138,889 GBP) came from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The remainder was covered locally.