The shipping container home designed by and Carl Turner and for Arup this year’s London Design Festival has sold on eBay for £18,030.

‘A New House for London’ – commissioned by The Building Centre as an experiment in low-cost, quick-build housing – comprises two 20ft-long shipping containers clad in wood. Its construction materials alone, which also include steel for the structure’s roof frames, have a value of £26,000.

‘The use of shipping containers is a proven method for quickly constructing durable, adaptable buildings around the world,’ said Carl Turner Architects. ‘However, it has not been seriously applied to how the London housing crisis calls for faster, more flexible solutions to inhabit under-used land.’

Design duo Eley Kishimoto created graphics for the one-bedroom home’s internal and external walls, while Urban Growth Learning Gardens lent their horticultural expertise.

Added Arup project director Stuart Smith: ‘The project challenges our notion of the space we need to live. The container house poses the question, “Could you live in this?”’

Clearly someone thinks they can.

‘A New House for London’ remains on show on London’s Store Street, just outside The Building Centre HQ, until 17 October but will soon be delivered to its new owner.