ContaineR is a traveling film house dedicated to the cultural countdown to the winter Olympics in Vancouver 2010. The creators are a wonderful trio form of architect Robert Duke, designers Keith Doyle and Iain Sinclair, and artistic directors Nicole Mion and Evann Seibens. The containeR can fit up to 25 guests who look up to the screen in the vaulted space where they watch projected short films about movement, dance, and sports.

The structure speaks art as well. Graphic drawings of hands, eyes and cartoon cameras cover the steel walls of the originally cream and orange colored containers.  On a walk around the structure, viewers experience large-scale graffiti, and can watch a documentary of the construction on a video screen built into the container’s exterior.

The first public appearance of containR is at Moshe Safdie’s coliseum-esque Vancouver Central Library, and will continue its journey to and from different festivals over the next year, potentially taking on new capacities as a gallery, performance venue and retail space. Springboard is still in talks with the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad organization, hoping that other containRs can be built in public venues like Whistler, the Richmond Skating Oval, Cypress Mountain and downtown Vancouver.

Hopefully the structure will also continue to inspire and spark innovative uses of sustainable materials well beyond the city limits.