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concepts · updated 2026-07-19

Zomeworks shipping container prototype

confidence: medium volatility: cold

Four photographs (March and July 2026) plus a hand-drawn Zomeworks schematic document a shipping container prototype at the Zomeworks facility in Albuquerque, showing the radiant ceiling, absorber-clad exterior, and the full supply/return thermosiphon loop.

Four photographs, taken March 25 and July 10, 2026, document a Zomeworks shipping container prototype at the Zomeworks facility in Albuquerque, plus a hand-drawn schematic of the full system loop. The first two photographs were captured on an iPhone SE, likely during a site visit; two later photographs (iPhone SE) and the schematic (iPhone 17e) followed up on the same installation.

What the photographs show

Interior view looking up at Double Play metal ceiling panels with hydronic piping, brass fittings, and a CFL lamp pendant

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 of a converted shipping container building in a New Mexico desert setting, with black thermal absorber panels covering the south-facing wall

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.

Follow-up documentation (March and July 2026)

Exterior of a tan-painted shipping-container building with vertical black thermal-absorber panels between two windows, in a high-desert lot

A later, wider exterior view of the same container — same tan siding, same black absorber panel pattern, same roofline and door hardware as the original exterior photo above.

Interior view looking up at the Double Play ceiling, showing white push-fit tubing running to several brass manifold fittings across the structural beams

A closer interior view of the radiant ceiling piping — the same “ARTlines” poster visible through the doorway confirms this is the same room as the original interior photo.

Hand-drawn schematic titled "DOUBLE-PLAY CONTAINER ZOMEWORKS" showing a roof-mounted night-cooling radiator, an "Energie Solaire Collector," and a "Thermal Storage-Water" reservoir inside an insulated container, connected by color-coded supply/return piping

A hand-drawn system schematic diagramming the full loop: solar collector → thermal storage water → night-cooling radiator on the roof → back to storage → back to collector. This is the clearest single diagram in the archive of how the double-play thermosiphon‘s three stages — collection, storage, night radiation — connect as one closed loop.

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.

See also