A self-proclaimed “Solar Powered Lunch Box”, Muvbox transforms from a closed shipping container to a gourmet fast food destination in a flash of 90 seconds. The spotlight is now on food service, shipping container architecture’s newest adaptive darling, following in the footsteps of retail shops, prefab residences, and mobile clinics. The boxy trend is gaining momentum with a seemingly endless list of ways to transform retired shipping containers into minimally foot printed, self-contained urban hotspots like Muvbox.

To get a better idea of how the transformation happens, watch the You Tube video.

Restaurateur Daniel Noiseux, who incidentally introduced the first wood stove pizza to Montreal, realized Muvbox to offer food lovers a dining experience like none other. The savoring spot is located in Montreal’s Old Port where hungry people in the area can easily access affordable gourmet eats from a modern, eco-friendly box that has probably traveled more than any of its patrons. When nighttime approaches the already petite resto retracts into its box shell until the next morning when it’s time to metamorphosize once again with a simple push of a button.

A recent predecessor to Muvbox is Puma City, a monstrous 11,000 square-foot retail shop built from multiple stacked shipping containers. The structure takes advantage of existing container connectors to join sections together as well as the existing global shipping network. Each module is designed to ship individually just like a conventional cargo container, making the pick-apart building mobile as a whole. Puma City was by architecture and design firm Lo-Tek whose container mastery took flight earlier on in the form of residential dwellings.

Lo-Tek’s Container Home Kits are prefab DIY habitats composed of stacked 40-foot-long containers arranged according to the owner’s unique needs and wants. Depending on the surrounding landscape, add-ons like carports, swimming pools, and tool sheds are totally possible. Not only does this highly-personalized setup make for a cool, modern pad, it allows you to up and move across the country without the stress of house-hunting!

Living, shopping, and now dining have now made their way inside physical boxes by thinking outside the proverbial box. It seems only natural that any and every service and commerce application should and will take advantage of what these blank corrugated steel canvases have to offer in eco-friendliness, mobility, adaptability, aesthetics, modularity, and just plain coolness.