I guess because a shipping container is rectangular and that a house can be rectangular.

This wasn't a bad series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA5fh29rhLs

Put me in the 'shipping containers make shitty houses' camp.

I love that they wood frame the interiors for insulation and walls.

Could have just built a wood frame house. Quicker, faster and more roomy.

$80 / square foot is, like, cheap, but I'm not sure I would really call it amazingly cheap.

Right, they're so bad. Structurally unsound once you start putting windows in. They need insulation which either significantly intrudes on your interior space or you put it on the outside and you then need to do basically a traditional exterior and lose any supposed benefit of the metal enclosure.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "compromised"? Sure, they can no longer be stacked 7 units high, but I am skeptical that cutting out a handful of windows and a door is going to make a container structurally unsound for the purposes of container homes.

Cut out a whole side wall? That's a very different story.