“I really gravitate towards minimalistic design styles,” Angela Noble says. “I'm not much on that unfinished style that some people choose with containers. Ours is really polished. It looks a bit more finished than some of the more rustic ones you might see.” A flurry of new laws intended to streamline housing construction have been recently passed in California, including SB9, which makes it easier for homeowners to build ADUs on their property. Depending on the lot size and shape, a modular unit like a shipping container could make sense for adding a pied-à-terre. “If your property lends itself to their shape, I think it's a suitable material,” Noble says. “We commissioned a custom design, which wouldn't be very cost-effective. We paid for architecture, structural engineering—we did everything. But if there was one design you could recreate hundreds of times, I could see that being a cost-effective solution to help with the housing crisis.” Gary London is a real estate advisor and University of San Diego instructor. In a 2016 Union-Tribune story, he expressed doubts about the potential of shipping containers as a construction material. I asked London if his opinion had changed or evolved. “What's evolved is that housing needs are even more acute than they have ever been,” London says. “So to the extent that we're pulling out all the stops in how we deliver that housing, I'm all for it.” “The key issue is, ‘What's the point of containers?’ The few that we've seen around town, the point has just been eccentricity,” London tells me. “There's some interest there, but that's hardly a solution to housing issues. Containers will only represent a solution if they can be delivered and built substantially cheaper than any other kinds of housing. I'm all for that. I just don't think it has a big imprint in terms of delivery of housing in San Diego.” Auchettl, the Aussie architect with shipping container projects all over the country, is similarly pragmatic. “I think the housing crisis in the U.S. is much bigger than what material we use to build housing,” he says. “Ultimately, a shipping container itself is just one very small part of what goes into a building. Nothing changes in the interior finishes, the drywall; it literally just ends up being the skin and the skeleton of the building.” Dwellings made from shipping containers are a compelling articulation of industrial home design style and minimalist philosophy. They definitely look cool. Are they a game-changer? Maybe not. Maybe that’s not the point. “It's the novelty of staying in a shipping container versus a stucco box. It’s not boring.” -Philip Auchettl
ABOVE The backyard office-slash- ADU RAD LAB designed for Angela and Cris Noble. BELOW Shipping containers create the backbone for urban gathering space at Quartyard in East Village.
39 SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE
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