This just in. A reader just sent us this email which pretty much sums up the extreme sport of real estate right now:
I was just eavesdropping on these two guys in the cafe. One was talking about approaching a co-op and buying their roof for 100k, and then putting two shipping containers on the roof to build an apartment. Is he insane, or brilliant???
We're not sure, but the Europeans are already into this and we would drop down a LoftCube in a heartbeat. (Thanks, Aras!) MGR
People build on top of buildings all the time. There's a whole house on top of a building near me. It has a deck and a pergola and trees and looks like a nice little cabin that just happens to have been plunked on top of an apartment building.
There is an old interior design book called "High-Tech", by Kron and Slesin, that shows the same, an abode on top of a building made out of a couple of shipping containers, and it is right here on Manhattan. It's all been done;)
"More Space" by Fay Sweet has a few pictures of a pre-fab room on a rooftop. Conran's "Small Spaces" has a picture of an old truck container built on a roof. I read a longer article about this but can't remember where (sorry). Conran states this was done by architects LOT/EK
Shipping containers as apts is so 2003. Get with it.