A handful of architects began building with shipping containers over a decade ago. It was a contrarian maneuver (the rusted corrugated walls were a gritty counterpoint to the fashionable white surfaces of modernism), but the containers were cheap, mobile and recyclable. Nobody put them to more imaginative use than Adam Kalkin, a New Jersey architect who designed midrise apartment buildings, urban infill and mobile art installations with them. "Quik Build" (Bibliotheque McLean/London; $49.95), scheduled to be published next month, shows 32 of his projects in all their odd inventiveness, including Bunny Lane, a home with a towering atrium of container walls; the Push Button House, a living room that unfolds from a container with motorized walls; and an apartment building in Salt Lake City, above. Ever the artsy provocateur, Mr. Kalkin will sell editions scented with odors found inside containers, for $99.99.
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