If you had a shipping container, what would you do?

If you had a shipping container, what would you do?

You could store it in a yard with hundreds of other containers like these on Port Hills Road
 in Christchurch.

Or, you could do what we did: fill it with all of your belongings and let it travel for two months 

on a boat from Columbus, Ohio to Christchurch, NZ.

It turns out that this is a pretty boring use of a shipping container.

 Who knew that there are so many other things that they can be used for.  For example, they can serve as effective fences to block off entry to buildings that have been damaged by boulders jiggled loose by earthquakes.

 In this case, it is the former administrative office for the tunnel that connects Heathcote and Lyttleton.

Speaking of blocking things, you could also pile shipping containers on top of each other.  In this way, they serve as (hopefully) effective blockades for falling rocks.

The road that runs from Christchurch to the beach town of Sumner is flanked on one side by the Pacific and on the other side cliffs. 

Unfortunately, some of the cliffs gave way during the earthquakes sending rocks (and some homes, see below) tumbling down. Shipping containers have been piled two high between the cliffs and road as a safety measure. The shipping containers look so small because, of course, the cliffs are so high and steep.

 

In their natural state, shipping containers are not particularly attractive, especially when you have lots of them lining your roads. So why not turn them into an art gallery?



Design them, paint them or .... cover them in a handmade quilt! Who'd have thought that one could use a shipping container as a place to display quilts? In Sumner, there is amazing knitted/crocheted quilt artistry draping one of the shipping containers positioned to break rock falls onto the main road.



Other functions, you ask? Well, shipping containers have a lot of space inside that can be filled with whatever you want, not just personal items to ship around the world.  So, you could turn a shipping container into a fish and chip shop, like this one in Sumner. The hotel (backpacker) behind it is closed due to earthquake damage.

You could also turn it into a very cool espresso bar like the Upshot in Heathcote.

Or, if you had a few shipping containers, you could paint them red and turn them into a pub,
like the Port Hole in Lyttleton.

Or if you felt really inspired, you could create a whole mini-city out of shipping containers! 

Witness downtown Christchurch where a container mall has sprung up as a temporary replacement for the many buildings destroyed by the earthquakes.

If you had a shipping container, what would you do?