One can make some surprisingly beautiful houses out of shipping containers. I can't find the link at the moment but one such company advertises in dwell magazine. Hopefully I can find it.
For houses featured in Dwell, shipping containers are merely a fetish incorporated into million dollar+ dwellings.
Shipping containers are uninsulated and have stressed skin construction - they require a lot of work to be used as a thermal envelop, or when incorporating fenestration (not to mention blowing out a whole side.
With the economic downturn, the glut of shipping containers is long gone and prices for used containers have risen significantly over the past several years.
A lot of those buildings which are featured in glossy architectural rags are actually built with custom modules, not actual containers because the dimensions of a standard shipping container are suitable for...well, shipping, not human habitation - 7'-10" inside height before interior ceiling and wall finishes are added (and that's if your insulation is exterior).
I believe it, but at a certain point you are just using the containers as a metal frame with sheet metal sides that you are cutting a lot of holes in, and at some point it would make more sense to just build a metal framed building in the first place.
