Adam Kalkin: Home Sweet Shipping Container

Home Sweet Shipping Container

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Radical architect Adam Kalkin '84 designed something called Quik House, a kit home built around five recycled shipping containers—"the chicest weekend retreat one can buy for $99,000," according to Vogue magazine. Winner of the P/A Young Architects Award in 1990, Kalkin created a customized version of the Quik House for an exhibition at Deitch Projects' Wooster Street gallery in SoHo last year. "Suburban House Kit" featured skylights, mahogany sliding doors, a stainless-steel kitchen, custom-designed carpeting, and a stainless-steel hearth.

Quik House is all the rage among the design elite (fashion designer Cynthia Rowley and interior designer Albert Hadley are among his clients). But Kalkin envisions another use for his Quik House, as well. He is currently collaborating with the Pingry School (Kalkin is an alum) on a year-long project to build a disaster relief housing prototype on the school's Martinville, New Jersey, campus. "Our objective is to create an inexpensive, quick, and environmentally sustainable architectural system that could be used by millions of inadequately housed people around the world," says Kalkin. Students will work with Kalkin and faculty in the fine arts, computer science, and biology to address economic, agricultural, energy, health, and social issues relevant to disaster relief in addition to participating in the construction of the prototype. "This project will benefit the student community at Pingry," Kalkin says, "but more importantly it will contribute to the discourse surrounding the issue of adequate housing throughout the world."

More: http://www.aavc.vassar.edu/vq/articles/Containing-a-Home