¶ Zomeworks shipping container prototype
Two photographs taken March 25, 2026 showing a Zomeworks shipping container prototype. The images were captured on an iPhone SE, likely during a site visit to the Zomeworks facility in Albuquerque.
¶ What the photographs show
Interior Double Play ceiling panel system — dark corrugated metal panels act as both radiant ceiling and thermal mass; white hydronic pipes carry fluid between ceiling and storage. Brass compression fittings visible at pipe junctions.
Exterior — converted shipping container with black thermal absorber panels on the south-facing wall. The absorbers (unglazed pool-style collectors) collect heat in winter and radiate to the night sky for cooling in summer. The white metal roof is the exterior face of the Double Play radiant ceiling seen above.
The images document a shipping container that has been adapted or is being prototyped as a thermal system platform. Shipping containers offer a standardized steel shell — a modular, relocatable building envelope that could serve as a testbed or product platform for passive heating and cooling systems.
¶ Why it matters
The container prototype represents a continuation of the archive's thermal vision into 2026. Where the original work focused on custom-built structures (the Baer Zome cluster, the Andy Shack, Bruce Davis's studio), a shipping container approach would make passive thermal systems deployable in a standardized, mass-producible form factor. This echoes the archive's long-standing argument that the hardware should be simple — the physics does the work.