Interior Design Blog

An oil silo is a container for compressed liquefied petroleum and it is estimated that there are approximately 49,000 of them in more than 660 oil refineries around the world. However, as oil resources run out and the world turns increasingly towards reusable energy, all these containers and refineries will most likely be abandoned in the future.

According to PinkCloud's vision, the oil silo home will be a 100 per cent self-supporting housing solution for the post-oil world, with their spherical shape and large surface area suitable for collecting solar energy through solar panels all year round.

The community of oil-silo homes would be interconnected with shared resource infrastructure, where all resources produced by individual houses are pooled and then shared between the households, says PinkCloud. The pre-existence of thousands of oil silos around the world would also eliminate the standard costs of new construction -PinkCloud estimates that the full cost of constructing one silo is £225,000. As they are built to high industrial standards as it is, quality structure is also ensured without extra costs.

In order to make the containers inhabitable, the contaminated silos would be treated with in-situ oil bioremediation, which uses soil microbes to remove toxic chemicals. The containers would then be retrofitted to make them livable.

One container could be divided into three separate apartments, housing up to 12 people. The sleeping and living spaces have been designed by PinkCloud to make as much use of the natural light as possible. Its repurposed silos would also feature large openings fitted with prefabricated balcony units for open-air ventilation.

The Silo House from PINKCLOUD.DK on Vimeo.