It’s a definite sign of the times when instead of bestowing your little princess with Malibu Barbie’s Dream House or a battery-operated hamster habitat for Christmas, you can present her with a miniature shipping container home replete with baltic birch flooring, sliding panel doors, and tasteful, doll-sized modern furniture that's decidedly Design Within Reach meets Fisher Price. The only thing missing is a mini solar array.

 

Although I’ve written about both eco-friendly dollhouses and the green building practice of transforming derelict shipping containers into beautiful modular homes in the past, M112 Pod Miniatures from Paris Renfroe Design are something totally new, and well, a bit unexpected.

 

St. Paul, Minneapolis-based “industrial modernist” Paris Renfroe is established at designing life-size modern furnishings but his foray into doll-house scale shipping container homes is a relatively new one. Each M112 Pod Miniature home is 20 inches long, 8 inches wide, and 8.5 inches high. They’re available (for $175) in an array of colors including White, Orange, Gray, Apple Green, and Sky Blue or for a bit extra ($250) you can order a M112 Pod home in natural rust.

 

As mentioned, each home is outfitted with baltic birch floors, ceilings, and walls; sliding panel doors; a frosted window wall; a metal rung ladder for roof access; and port holes in the ceiling and floor for stacking. Renfroe’s 1:12 and 1:1 scale furnishings — his own designs plus iconic pieces from Minotti and other designers — are available separately.

 

Pretty impressive, I must say, and an interesting way to get your kids hooked on both modern design and the possibilities of green building at an early age. What do you think? Would an architecturally advance dollhouse like the M112 Pod fly in your home? Or would you rather just stick to traditional, humdrum plastic dollhouses? 

 

Via [Inhabitots]

 

Images: Paris Renfroe Designs