Those who passed by the town of Pardes Hanna Karkur in Haifa district last summer witnessed an unusual scene: giant trucks transporting shipping containers to what looked like a construction site. But unlike other construction sites, this one had no concrete mixers, no tractors and no bulldozers. Instead, metal welders were setting up their equipment to weld together the large containers, while cranes lifted the containers in place. A billboard announced the opening of the Pop Box shopping mall, with cafes and shops housed in the containers — a first in Israel.

Metal containers come in all sizes and colors; some people use them for storage, while others use them for shipping. But some people live and work in them. And while container homes, offices and shopping centers are a common sight in Europe, in Israel they are rare, even though containers have been used by the military for the last four decades.

One of the first Israeli container housing projects was established during the 2014 Gaza war, when Israel's communities in the south suffered daily rocket fire. When Sderot, a city in the western Negev Desert, was repeatedly targeted, turning it into a ghost town, the Ayalim Association, which is dedicated to developing the Negev region, stepped in.

“The people of Ayalim turned to us with a very precise request: to plan and execute a student village in the center of Sderot within only five months,” architect Erez Ella told Al-Monitor. “In Israel such a time frame is practically impossible, not only because of the design process or the construction but also because one cannot start building anything without first getting the necessary permits. That was the main reason why we opted for a prefabricated solution. It allowed us to submit requests for permits quickly, right after the design stage was finished. By the time we got the permits the construction elements were ready. All we had to do was put them together at the site, like a jigsaw puzzle.”