Skyline Residence by Belzberg Architects in Los Angeles. Learn more about this project here.

Summer blockbusters are here! It’s that time of year when Hollywood puts out the sequels, prequels, action flicks, and star-studded vehicles that it hopes will break box office records. If The Great Gatsby or Iron Man 3 aren’t your speed, there’s always Star Trek Into Darkness or The Hangover III coming up. But whatever your movie taste (we won’t judge), you’re sure to love this collection of unconventional, modern movie theaters. No banal multiplexes here! So grab some popcorn (because we can’t guarantee these venues offer concessions) and enjoy.

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award in the Architecture + Fabrication category. See the full list of winners here.

In Seoul and its suburbs, it’s as if the last 50 years of urban thinking never happened. Large tracts of skyscrapers rise in mega-developments that wipe out the low-rises and small shops that came before, says Ada Tolla, a principal of LOT-EK Studio. “It’s an embracing of modernist thought, but half a century after, without any acknowledgment of the critical thinking that has gone toward the architectural experience in cities,” she says.

If you’re in the Seoul suburb of Anyang and want a taste of pedestrian life, the best place to get it is, ironically, in the woods. Foot traffic is strong at Hakwoon Park, which boasts a popular riverside trail bordering the region’s pristine hills. For the 2010 edition of the Anyang Public Art Project (APAP), a summertime public-art extravaganza that recurs every few years, Tolla and her colleagues turned eight shipping containers into a playful elevated pavilion that points to what a more active street life might look like. The project, called OpenSchool, took the jury prize in the Architecture + Fabrication category of the A+ Awards. Read more!

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Project: Port-a-Bach Shipping Container Home

Architect: Bonnifait + Giesen: Atelierworkshop

Location: New Plymouth, New Zealand

Atelierworkshop designed this portable retreat from, what else, a shipping container. The container was recycled from use in China and sent to New Zealand, where it was fitted with operable glazed doors and windows, built-in fixtures (cabinets and a bar), plus furnishings (a pair of beds). One of the walls folds out to form a sizable patio, perfect for barbecuing. Best of all, the entire structure can be securely shuttered and carried to another location with minimal hassle. See more of the project in the Architizer database.

Photo © Paul McCredie

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If you’re the sort who’s been squeezing your life into tiny-house-level accommodations, the New York–based architect Maziar Behrooz‘s shipping-container house is the perfect upgrade (and, for the rest of us spacehogs, a respectable downgrade). For just under $100,000, you’ll get a 960-square-foot high-ceilinged modernist dollhouse, complete with interior finishes, electrical fixtures, and sliding windows—shipping included! Read more.

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Photos via SF Eater.

Here at Architizer, architecture and pizza go hand in hand. We are firm believers that nothing complements a Margherita pie like a sprinkle of red pepper flakes and a heavy-handed dose of eccentric design. But when we first caught wind of San Francisco’s Del Popolo pizza truck, a readapted shipping container equipped with a wood-burning oven and set on the wheels of a Freightliner truck, our minds were thoroughly blown (or charred to blistery, thin-crusted perfection?). The project is the brainchild of Jon Darsky, a seasoned Bay Area pizzaiolo who grew tired of searching for the perfect spot for his pizzeria. The Brooklyn Law School graduate, who found a calling in spinning Neapolitan pies after not passing the California State Bar, decided to take matters into his own hands, outfitting a trans-Atlantic shipping container in true Pimp-My-Ride style with a glass-enclosed exhibition kitchen and, the heart of the operation, a 5,000-pound Stefano Ferrara oven imported from Naples. The bespoke food truck is a thing of beauty, making us feel a tinge more blasé about the shipping container garden at Brooklyn’s Roberta’s, the holy grail of hipster pizzerias. And from the look of it, Del Popolo’s pies will not disappoint. Is it lunch yet?

Photo via SFGate.

Photos via SF Eater.

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Brewster Kahle peeking into the physical archive of the Internet. Photo: Lianne Milton for the New York Times

Brewster Kahle is on a mission. The former Silicon Valley entrepreneur made a fortune selling a data-mining company to Amazon.com in the 90’s, and now he is the man behind a $3M and growing undertaking to create a comprehensive physical archive of the printed word. This means, while many of us are shedding physical and virtual cargo by sending our data to the ‘clouds,’ Kahle is retrieving digital information and transcribing it back into print to be stored in a monolithic, temperature-controlled storage constructed from 40 shipping containers, reports the New York Times. Not only has he archived 150 billion Web pages thus far, but Kahle has also begun archiving physical texts in a new archive, taking discarded books from institutional and personal libraries, organizing and storing them in his modified shipping container vault for safekeeping. Continue.

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It is estimated that over two billion wood pallets are in circulation at any given time, and two-thirds of them are only ever used once. This frightening statistic has not gone unnoticed to the world’s environmentally conscious designers, and the recycling of shipping pallets into new objects and new spaces has almost caught up to its whale-sized corresponding trend, shipping container architecture.

Pallet houses, pallet chairs and wild interior landscapes constructed out of pallets have materialized left and right, all championing the coarse aesthetic of pale, unfinished wood. But why should pallets be recycled only to reiterate their lowly origins? Dissatisfied with the current trend, French design firm Studio-aparte aspired for a new recycled pallet aesthetic that can match the lofty ethics of the concept. ‘Woodstock’ is a minimalist black sofa assembled out of—you may have guessed it—discarded shipping pallets. But would your unsuspecting houseguests be able to tell? More after the jump!

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Fourth-grader Serina Hamada stands on the balcony of Shigeru Ban’s three-story temporary housing complex in Miyagi. Photo via The Japan Times.

Last month we explored the work of architect Shigeru Ban, whose work ranges from installing paper tube and curtain partitions in Japan’s gymnasiums, creating personal space for earthquake evacuees, to building an iconic new bastion of fine art for the Centre Pompidou in far out Metz, France. Renowned for his dedication to elegant sustainable design and his championing of the “permanence of impermanence,” Ban has come to the fore not only as a successful architect but also as a pioneering humanitarian. Earlier this week, Ban’s two- and three-story quakeproof freight container settlements were completed in Miyagi, one of the three Tohoku region prefectures hit the hardest by the earthquake and tsunami in March. More after the break.

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All diagrams via Good

Shipping container architecture has sustained our attention for years now, or at least enough to warrant its own Wikipedia article. Known for their durability, these iconic corrugated steel boxes have been stacked, cantilevered, painted over, taken apart and reassembled to become inhabitable spaces for pretty much anything, from growing and selling food to teaching the community. It is the darling success story of adaptive re-use. So when word broke earlier that GM planned to phase out another hulking, seemingly indestructible steel box made in excess, the Hummer, some architects must have thought, what’s the difference? Click to see more.

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Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron push forward plans to convert Hong Kong’s Central Police Station, a 19th century British colonial jail, into a new non-profit space for contemporary art. [via FlashArt]

Photographer Stephen Mallon chronicles images of the MTA using the Atlantic as a dumping yard for thousands of old subway cars, creating “habitats for marine life from Georgia to Jersey.” [via Fast Company]

Despite the current economic climate, developers continue to push skypscrapers to new limits. Record covers the ten tallest buildings currently under construction; six are designed by American firms though just one is on American soil. Five, however, are in China. [via Architectural Record]

What would you do with 160 square feet free-of-charge at the new Dekalb Market in Brooklyn? Urban Space in partnership with GOOD is offering one entrepreneur free rent for six months in the new market for the ‘most creative and innovative’ proposal in a salvaged shipping container. [via GOOD]

From March 24th through May 1oth, Kean Univeristy will display “Harry Bertoia: Works on Paper and Furniture,” celebrating not just the artist’s contribution to the world of furniture design but his explorations in printmaking and painting. [via Dwell]

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