Watch: You’d Never Guess This Modern Home Was Once a Shipping Container

What if your next home could be built in weeks, powered by the sun, and crafted from a recycled shipping container?

In Bengaluru, a small team is quietly rethinking how homes are built — and what they can be made of. The Habitainer, a local startup, is experimenting with an idea that feels both futuristic and refreshingly grounded: turning old shipping containers into functional, liveable homes.

Their latest build is a solar-powered duplex made from repurposed containers — and it looks nothing like what you’d expect.

Inside, the space is surprisingly open — wide rooms, large windows, and a minimalist design that does away with the usual ‘industrial’ aesthetic of container homes. But what really sets it apart is what’s tucked behind the walls: solar panels, greywater recycling systems, and reused materials that help reduce the home’s environmental footprint.

Over the past four years, The Habitainer has worked on over 200 such projects across India. Their prefab homes come in different formats — from compact studios to larger family units — and each one is customised to suit the needs of the person living in it.

The approach offers a few advantages: faster construction, less material waste, and lower carbon emissions. But perhaps more importantly, it offers an alternative to the resource-heavy way most urban housing is built today.

Container homes aren’t new — but The Habitainer’s work shows how they can be adapted to an Indian context, and to real people’s lives. It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s one possible answer to the growing questions around sustainability, affordability, and space in our cities.

Would you live in a house made from a shipping container?

Maybe the idea isn’t as far-fetched as it once seemed.

Edited by Khushi Arora