Travis Price has a dream, a dream that anyone can move from city to city and still live in the same home. In his words:
I have these visions of building steel frames around the country, with jack-pump elevators plugging and unplugging shipping containers. Say you want to move from Chicago to Atlanta — I unplug my entire house, it goes down the elevator, onto a track and three months later I'm living in the same house.How exactly is this even possible? With homes made out of shipping containers, Price is making this a reality. Already, Washington, D.C. has one residential development in Brookland made from the reusable materials with another development planned in Rosedale. In an Q&A with The Washington Post, Travis Price gives an in-depth look at what inspired him to begin using shipping containers as a medium and what his goals are for the future of shipping container homes. Here are some of the highlights from the article that can't be overlooked:
First and foremost, three (or four) more residential shipping container developments are being planned, but according to Price, "We can't disclose them yet."
Price also hopes to use the shipping container homes in an incredibly new and innovative way: luxury, sea container housing. With hopes to build repurposed barges on the Potomac River, Price wants to build a "sea container village" as a way to help the homeless. He said, "Let's have a container village that floats up to the dock every night. Everyone gets to sleep on board, shower and then come back into the neighborhood every day."
Using shipping containers as a construction material is able to cut costs significantly. One single shipping container costs between $2,500 and $4,500. "In typical construction, at least 50 to 60 percent of the building costs can be the outer shell work; in this case, the [shipping container] outer shell is more like 15 percent of the total cost," said Price, who later added that energy bills for the homebuyer are also incredibly affordable. "We will be approaching the lowest fuel bills in the city."
Speaking on Washington, D.C., itself, Travis described the District as always being good at authenticity. He told The Washington Post, "There's a historic reference here that is authentic. What they've been really bad at is Disney-fying and trying to replicate that historicism. Everything reads as fake. Now you have first-class, modern residential homes going up with a higher quality to them."
Travis Price received a Master's of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of New Mexico, according to the Travis Price Architects website. He's a member of the American Institute of Architects and serves as visiting lecturer and adjunct professor at Pratt Institute, Princeton University, Yale University, the Smithsonian, and more. He's a registered architect in 10 states, including Washington, D.C. and has won a myriad of awards, including the DC AIA Design Award.
· Will the idea to make shipping-container housing spread in D.C.? [The Washington Post]
· Travis Price Architects [Official Website]
· Shipping Container Condos Make Their Move Near H Street [Curbed DC]
· D.C. Gets First Apartments Made of Shipping Containers [Curbed DC]
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