IDA on McKinley

It’s said that records are meant to be broken, and the IDA on McKinley does just that. At 85 feet tall, this new shipping container apartment in Phoenix is now the tallest container building in North America at of 2022.

The IDA on McKinley is six stories tall, though only the top five are built with containers. It’s named after President William McKinley’s wife Ida, given that President McKinley is the namesake of the street in front of the apartment.

Prefabricated cement culvert boxes were used to build the ground floor, which provide shade to the huge windows that reach almost all the way up to the 17-foot tall ceiling. This floor is dedicated to retail businesses, with two commercial suites that have almost 4,000 square feet of combined space.

On top of the cement culverts are the 66 shipping containers that make up the bulk of the buildings over 30K square feet of floor area. The project was built solely with used and repurposed 40-foot containers, one of many sustainability features that we’ll talk about more in a second.

But first, the apartments themselves. A combination of one and two-bedroom units are included in the complex, with a total of 18 apartments overall. Their sizes range from 650 to 900 square feet, and all contain modern features and amenities you’d come to expect in a downtown building in a major city.

Well, there is one amenity that is somewhat curious missing: parking. Though the building was built on the site of a former 22-space parking lot, the project intentionally didn’t include any car parking in its footprint. Instead, residents are going to be encouraged to walk, take the Valley Metro Rail, or use ride share.

It’s an interesting move for a city that an article in the New York Times described as “perhaps the most auto-addicted city in America”, “the world’s least sustainable city”, and “the second-worst big city in America for pedestrians”. But the designers and developers wanted the project to be a beacon of sustainability and forward-looking design, and even the city of Phoenix views it as a demonstration of the types of development that are possible in the future.

So they included exterior showers for bikers to use, charging stations for electric bikes, and filtered water bottle refill stations on each floor. In concert with the lack of parking, it’s a combination of positive and negative reinforcement that will hopefully incentivize users to adapt to a more pedestrian-centered way of living.

So what else did the designers incorporate into the IDA on McKinley? They obviously kept the container aesthetic, maintaining the corrugated steel on the outside (though supplemented with a white, high-reflectivity coating to reduce heat transfer) and the plywood floors on the inside. And they used our recommendation of closed-cell foam insulation to ensure apartments are comfortable in the hot Arizona sun.

Grated walkways between units allow for rainwater to be collected, which is stored in a 3,000-gallon tank on the ground floor. This rainwater harvesting system works in tandem with the xeriscaping and bioswales around the building to ensure minimal drinking water is used for the landscaping and runoff is contained.

The design of the container apartment also gets double benefits from solar canopies on the roof patio and over the street-level sidewalk. Both areas provide shade to residents while also generating electricity for the building as part of a 33-kilowatt solar power system.

From start to end, the project took about 1.5 years to complete, just finishing in June of 2022. It’s likely that the containers and prefabricated cement boxes on the ground floor sped up some of the construction timeline, but with so many other factors involved, it was still a length project.

The IDA on McKinley certainly makes a statement both in it’s appearance and in the thought behind some of it’s sustain design choices. For the right type of resident, it might be just the type of downtown living that’s needed.

However, for now, the building will be focused on short-term renters. According to reports, Sonder has leased the building for five years, so you’ll soon be able to stay in this incredible new building on your next visit to Phoenix.

We’re looking forward to hearing reports of visitors to the building. If you have a chance to stay there, leave us a comment and let us know what you thought of this incredible shipping container apartment.