Storage Containers As a Base for Innovative Housing Design
Creating Community: Tiny Houses & Shipping Container Architecture
In an age of rising house prices, the average family’s dream house can often be unobtainable. Throw environmental and sustainability factors into the mix and you have the perfect scenario for a growing tiny house movement. What is a tiny house you ask? Well – it’s exactly what it sounds like, small living spaces that use every single inch without wasting space, money or building materials. Many families are now more risk averse and don’t want to end up in debt, instead preferring to purchase their home outright – without a mortgage. Tiny houses provide this opportunity.
Tiny houses come in a wide variety of forms, all of which have a small environmental, financial and spacial footprint. Whether it’s a small cabin, a yurt, a converted trailer or even a second hand shipping container, tiny houses give people the opportunity to build their personal living space from scratch in an affordable and environmentally friendly manner.
Looking for Like Minded People – Try Online for Tiny House Communities
Chances are, you’ve already decided that you want to build a tiny house, and you are interested in shipping container cargotecture. Now you need more information, and want to chat to like minded people who don’t think you are nuts for choosing to live in something that’s completely different to the standard Aussie 3 bedroom house and garage. Luckily there is the internet and it’s full of likeminded people from all around the world, who have already built their own tiny houses from shipping containers, or are at least planning their own projects.
Most of these resources are based in America, where there is a growing tiny house movement, you’ll also find the odd tiny house builder across the ditch in New Zealand. So while you wait for things to catch on in Australia, you’ll need to get in touch with people internationally using sites such as meetup.com. While there are plenty of overseas communities on the site, why not create one for your state or city in Australia?
Other online resources such as tinyhousecommunity.com and even a tiny house conference (held annually in Portland – a mecca for tiny houses in the United States) are starting to pop up all the time. Forums come and go, but are a great place to ask questions from people who have been there and done that when it comes to building their own tiny houses, some of the best include Small House Forum and The Tiny House Forums. There’s even a dating website set up for fans of the tiny house movement if that’s your thing!
Facebook is another great way to connect with fans of Tiny Houses, and there are plenty of fan pages and groups to choose from, with the Tiny House Community having at least 22,000 followers and regularly posting information (mainly USA based) regarding house designs, local government rules and regulations and space to place your tiny house.
Tiny House Villages – A Growing Part of the Tiny House Movement
Tiny house villages are a new, but growing part of the Tiny House movement. Currently, many tiny house villages are still in the development phases as many tiny houses still fall into a grey area with regards to local government regulation. It’s likely that these villages will form along similar lines of trailer or RV parks (or camp sites), though without the negative stereotypes that are associated with that form of housing. These villages might include community amenities such as swimming pools, gyms or stores, and provide the basic infrastructure needed for tiny homes to get “on grid” such as power and water.
Image Source: Shareable
Shareable provides a good overview of the sort of villages that currently exist (with most of them being based in the United States) for tiny house enthusiasts that don’t have access to land of their own. These villages include a mixture of communities designed to house the homeless, those aimed at bay area hipsters who work online, or protest groups loosely associated with the occupy movement.
Are you ready to build your own tiny house from a second hand shipping container?
Contact the team at Gateway Container Sales & Hire. Our team of shipping container experts will help suggest the ideal shipping container for your project, whether it’s a standard cargo container, or something that’s already had some modifications. Give us a call now and start your tiny house adventure!
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