Inhabitat

PUSH BUTTON HOUSE

Not long ago, we raved about Cargotecture’s ingenius cargo dwellings. Last week, the NY Times wrote about another cargo master, Adam Khalkin, who unveiled his new Push Button House at this week’s Art Basel Miami Beach.

The Push Button house is a single cargo container with motorized doors that open at the push of a button to reveal a plush interior. Khalkin has also designed a 3-bedroom house with five cargo containers called the Quik House and a mini version called the A-Pod. His own house is made of twelve cargo containers in an airport hangar shell (see below).

Though the corrugated orange exteriors of shipping containers are fairly unvaried, Khalkin makes up for the uniform exteriors with a limitless palette of interior options. As he said to the New York Times: “You come up with a core idea and then there are all of these spin-offs. It’s like making a good bomb. You want it to fragment into five thousand pieces, not just split in half.” This unexpected (and rather unsettling) analogy is on par with Khalkin’s generally eccentric and multifarious aesthetic, which comes through at his website – worth a look.

+ www.architectureandhygiene.com

Thanks, Geoff!

10 Responses to “PUSH BUTTON HOUSE”

Ross Says:

December 29th, 2005 at 9:53 am

This project seems to be a cool idea.

GreenH Says:

January 20th, 2006 at 2:01 am

I am excited about this most practical application of materials. I always wondered what to do with those extra bedrooms children leave behind as they grow. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could help them load their old bedroom/ new studio on a flatbed, worry less and have more open interior space?! Lets hope he doesn’t quit fragmenting,

Robbie Says:

January 20th, 2006 at 8:54 am

i love it. i have had dreams of what it would be like to make a home out of tractor trailer beds. you could put them in a square and have a 4 to 5 bedroom home with dividing one tractor bed into thirds and having 3 bedrooms and the one into thirds making 2 bedrooms (1 master bedroom with bath), and a bathroom and the other one a kitchen and the 4th as a window to show off the center of it all as a dining and livingroom area. some of the tractor trailer companies have gone out of business and the beds are just in a parking lot and wasting away when they could become homes.
thanks for listining to me,
Robbie Cattanach

Jaggae Says:

May 24th, 2006 at 4:04 am

Woah, i can ship my home anywhere! Imagine asking your child to “Go to your container!”. I wonder how does the water stay inside the toilet bowl though. Or maybe you’re supposed to unplug it from the sewers…

Julie Says:

May 24th, 2006 at 4:29 pm

The possibilities are endless, the limitations are substantial. How many of us have a spare warehouse or airplane hanger available? I do like the container reuse because they are a hideous necessity for globalization.

Inhabitat » Blog Archive » PREFAB FRIDAY: Adam Kalkin Says:

June 30th, 2006 at 6:53 am

[...] If you were to look up “mad genius” in the dictionary, you might find a picture of Adam Kalkin. One glance through his vast portfolio and it’s clear that this is not the work of an ordinary mind. The bulk of Kalkin’s large-scale work involves shipping containers and steel Butler buildings. His cargo dwellings were featured last December in the New York Times and won an instantly fanatical audience (ourselves included). [...]

andrea Says:

September 26th, 2007 at 8:44 am

visit web site and partecipate

alex Says:

March 26th, 2008 at 4:24 pm

I have a dream of starting my own business and once I get enough money to build a facility from scratch I plan on hiring someone who can build it using cargo bins! I think it is a great creative and cool looking way to construct buildings…I do wonder on the prices of buying x amount of cargo bins under the assumption they aren\’t free.

alex Says:

March 26th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

When I can afford to build my own facility for a business that I want to start I would be really excited if I could build a facility using this design idea of cargo bins and sustainability so that I can not only be helping my customers, but can also be helping my planet. The only worry that comes to mind is cost, is it overall cheaper to construct buildings using cargo bins?

BUNNY LANE: Adam Kalkin’s Home Within a Home – Style of Design Says:

March 7th, 2009 at 4:21 am

[...] fans of architect Adam Kalkin for his quirky and fun home designs, such as the rapidly deploying Push-Button Home and the prefab Quick House. Now we’ve just spotted another fun Adam Kalkin masterpiece called [...]

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