Our new metallic friend

So the past few months, we've been slowly growing our team and office-space as we work with a steadily growing list of clients (yay!)

The most visible change, if you came to visit our studio, would be a re-purposed shipping container sitting next to our office space. Take a peek:

The container in its new avatar as our studio annexe.

Here's why we did it:
• We needed more storage space.
• We had no time to make a new building.
• We did not want to disrupt the land and trees by new construction.
• We wanted a cost-effective and eco-friendly option
• The new space had to be airtight and waterproof to protect our fabrics. 

Since Kochi is a port city, we met with some folks who were repurposing shipping containers and this seemed to be an obvious solution. They cut out a window on one side for ventilation, fitted some metal shelves in it, painted it all over and voila: Instant-office!

Here is the container before it got glammed-up:

Here it is in the shipyard, waiting to be adopted!

This is our container's birth-certificate of sorts. Excited to see its path to our doorstep!

Two weeks ago, a big ol' truck showed up with our freshly repainted container atop it. A tough little crane was waiting to pick it up and drop it off next to our office.

I think they're pondering how this is going to work. Can you see the hook of the crane on top left of this photo?

Here's the big-little crane that picked it off the truck and put it in our yard.

Here's a cellphone-video that my dad took, of this whole process. The scary parts of a suspended container in mid-air are at the end of the video :)

It was plenty of drama, plenty of excitement, but everything worked out and now we've got an amazing new annexe to our studio.

Yay for more shelves!

Here is a view of its back window as it rests on cinder-blocks next to the studio.

I'm deciding what to paint on it, maybe our fabric patterns? Let us know if you have any fun ideas for this blank canvas. xo, Chitra.