Aloha Block

HyBrid has built a studio cabin in Enumclaw, Washington. It's a 320 sq. foot masterpiece full of natural light and urban attitude in the woods. There are intriguing aspects of building with containers, besides the availability and economy.

All the structural load in an 8-by-40-by-9 1/2-foot container is carried by the corner castings, steel columns at each of the four corners. This means that doors and windows can occur anywhere else in the structure. Whole walls can be cut out and replaced with glass, and interior walls can be anywhere or nowhere.

The boxes can be stacked like giant Lego blocks, cantilevered into space to create intriguing overhangs and practical decks, or cut apart and reassembled into new configurations.

Read the August issue of Readers Digest for a quick snipet about cargotecture or go to http://www.hybridseattle.com/ to see renderings of the company's designs and vision of cargo communities.