The idea of turning cargo containers into homes has graduated from cool to uber-cool. How do we know? Well, there now are

Yes, that's more than a bit strange.  Today we'll look at a number of cargo-container conversions, plus a couple of other examples of repurposing structures.

An earthquake-resistant home at an affordable price: That was the client's mandate for architect Ruben Rivera Peede, who used two 40-foot-long containers and three 20-foot-containers to design Liray House in Santiago, Chile. The house was built by

which offers more information on the conversion.

has gotten its first-ever shipping container home. And if you're thinking cargo containers mean affordability, consider the $1.395 million price tag.

But the house, called the Beach Box, consists of not one but six shipping containers, giving it 2,000 square feet of space, with four bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. Plus, there's the oceanfront location, the pool, and the "eco-lux" finishes and amenities. The shipping containers came from

which retrofits and installs shipping containers around the U.S. and elsewhere. (Read

on Mother Nature Network. He's got links to Lloyd Alter's critical assessment of Beach Box shortcomings at Treehugger, and to the

Check out all the photos on the listing site, including that "killer" outdoor shower Hickman mentions.  The developer, Andrew Anderson, says everything used in the Beach Box was recycled. He plans to build more like it in the Hamptons.

NPR has a story on

featuring a home and a Mexican restaurant, both in Southeast.

doesn't just turn a shipping container into a home; it also uses the container to deliver the structural components of the house. Coates and Green aim to have a prototype completed in the Seattle area by early 2013. Two descriptions of the Eco-Pak are

which calls it a "game-changing concept," and

A roundup of many such stories

The homes range in size and style; some are downright beautiful; and one is an effort to help the needy.

(strength, durability, affordability) and disadvantages (toxic chemicals, restricted size and shape) of shipping containers as housing.

the argument and calls for comments, many of which are quite interesting.

including a simple box style by Poteet Architecture; a version by Maziar Behrooz Architecture with a double-height basement capped by two cargo containers; even a New York City townhouse; and, in the Netherlands, a 1,000-unit apartment block.

-- student dorms -- at National Geographic. That story also addresses the issue of sustainability, answering one of the objections raised in the Arch Daily article above:

According to figures from SG BLOCKS, a New York-based shipping container builder, fitting a container for housing use takes only one-twentieth the amount of energy of reprocessing the same amount of steel -- and results in an additional hundred years of lifetime.

Here are photos and floor plans

on a military base in Sri Lanka.

OK, they're not cargo containers, but

into modular homes seems to fit in the genre. It's the brainchild of a San Fernando Valley, Calif., modular home company called

A Spanish architecture firm, estudioMatongue, proposes this idea of

into one-person temporary homes, while leaving the upper section of the tank free to store water.

Here are links to this column’s previous coverage on the subject:

And a link to Ruth Mullen's 2009 story in Homes & Gardens of the Northwest about a steel cargo container used as a backyard studio in Northwest Portland.

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