Image via Complex Original
Prefabricated construction—often featuring stackable shipping containers—saves money, shortens construction time and reduces environmental impact. An increasingly popular way to create homes, pop-up restaurants, and mobile classrooms, the method has found a new fan amongst hotels. The ten awesome inns below prove that prefab can be five star.
10 Amazing Prefab Hotels
10. Container Design Loft
This bright-red hotel located feet from pristine Uruguayan beaches in the fishing town of Jose Ignacio is comprised of four shipping containers piled atop one another. Each high-end guest apartment within the building is decorated with refurbished 1950’s furniture and contains a double room, toilet, living room and kitchen. A solar water heater on the roof, low-energy LEDs and a self-sustaining garden keep the property eco-conscious. (Image: CDL)
9. Alterra Beach Resort
This sustainable resort near the beach in Pinamar, Argentina features old shipping containers repurposed as artsy private cabins. After buying the containers from the port of Buenos Aires, the hotel owners added insulating panels made from recycled materials and installed heating, cooling, a kitchenette, a bathroom and a private balcony in each unit. Alterra hopes to attract guests who seek proximity to nature without sacrificing luxury. (Image: Alterra)
8. Lookotels
The Lookhotel brand is set to build ten energy-efficient, low-cost and low-maintenance hotels across Spain. Composed of 100 factory-built capsules connected together on site, each hotel can be fully functional within a few months of delivery. While the approximately 100-square-foot capsules are certainly tight, they manage to house a sofa bed, TV, desk, chair and bathroom. (Image: Lookhotels)
7. Yotel New York City
Two blocks from Times Square, Yotel aims for a classy experience at a budget price. The prefabricated modular rooms are super small at 170 to 1,000 square feet but come equipped with high-end electronics and monsoon showers. Communal space on the fourth floor includes New York’s biggest outdoor terrace, multiple bars, a restaurant and a gym. Using the same prefab model, Yotel also opened two spots in London and one in Amsterdam. (Image: Yotel)
6. Tree Hotel
Brilliant design and prefab treehouse construction have combined to create the Tree Hotel, a series of guest rooms suspended in the canopy of the lush Boreal forest in Northern Sweden. There are currently four rooms, each a separate building high in the trees: the Cabin, the Bird’s Nest, the Blue Cone and the Mirrorcube, pictured here. Within five years, the hotel will have a total of 24 rooms completed offsite by 24 different architects.
5. Travelodge Uxbridge
86 Chinese shipping containers of various sizes pre-fitted with plumbing and electric were stacked and bolted into place onsite to create this 120-bedroom budget hotel in Uxbridge, England. The construction company responsible for the design and implementation estimates that the hotel chain saved almost one million dollars and at least 10 weeks of construction by going modular. (Travelodge)
4. Snoozebox Portable Hotel
Developed for music festivals and sporting events, the temporary and transportable Snoozebox Hotel has popped up across Europe. Stackable and available in multiple configurations with anywhere from 40-400 rooms, the hotel can be rendered fully operational in just 48 hours. Each of the two to four rooms per shipping container offers air conditioning, a flat-screen TV and WiFi.
3. Attrap’Rêves Bubble Hotel
The bubbles that comprise this hotel were originally designed as aesthetically unique and eco-friendly camping tents. Manufactured offsite, the bubbles were set up on three levels of hillside in a pine forest outside Marseilles. Some of the bubbles at Attrap’Rêves are fully transparent, while others are half opaque for increased privacy. While just 13 feet across and about 10 feet high, each abode has hardwood floors and a king-size bed.
2. Xiang Xiang Xiang Pray House
While the exterior of this five-star hotel built entirely out of recycled shipping containers is a bit boring, the interior is all about luxury. Each of the tiny but cozy guest rooms that dot the side of a hill in Changski, China, has traditional Chinese décor, skylights and designer furniture. Guests can also hang out in the lobby, restaurant or courtyards where tea ceremonies and music performances take place. (Image: Tonghe Shanzi Landscape Design)
1. Morerava Cabins
Made in Chile then shipped and put together on Easter Island, these up-to-six-person tourist cabins boast solar panels and rainwater collection systems to decrease resource consumption. The lightweight, exposed roof and walls give the individual hotel units a rustic quality that blends well with the natural environment. (Morerava Cabins)