Luke Iseman doesn’t just make cozy homes out of corrugated cargo containers. He makes commotion, controversy — and someday, he hopes, communities.

At this weekend’s Maker’s Faire, he hopes to also make cultural change, describing how this 160-square-foot steel box — part of a 12-member “Boxouse” container community hidden in a secret place in the East Bay — can help create affordable housing, turning old parking lots into new neighborhoods.

The event’s can-do spirit “encourages people to think ‘Maybe it’s not so unachievable to build my own house!’ ” said Iseman, above the roar of a plasma torch. A handsome 31-year-old, he’s earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, scars from a motorcycle crash and the ire of a neighbor and city officials in Oakland, where he and his container friends were evicted last February from their former Magnolia Street location.

His Saturday presentation — entitled “How To Build a Tiny House in One Week for Less than $10,000” — is one of 300 presentations and 900 exhibitions at the Bay Area’s favorite DIY event, an annual two-day, family-friendly festival at the San Mateo Convention Center that attracts tinkerers, inventors, artists, hackers and builders like Iseman.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Maker Faire is no longer just a showcase of earsplitting pyrotechnics created by expert eccentrics.

“The Maker Faire has matured into a force for broader social change,” said Iseman. “These really cool toys helped people make things, and make businesses. Now we are starting to see it, I hope, as a force for broader social change.”

This year the crowded, two-day event has grown into three days, to ease some congestion; Friday is reserved for corporate, educational and media guests. Last year’s crowd of 130,000 was more than fivefold the size of its 2006 debut, sponsored by Make Magazine, based in San Francisco.

While the event is exported around the world this year to 150 different “mini-Faires,” from Baton Rouge to Bogota, the event was first held in the Bay Area, which holds a special place in the hearts of organizers, said co-creator Sherry Huss.

“The Bay Area is unmatched in its creative and playful spirit,” said Huss. “We have more fire and more large-scale art than any other Maker Faire. We have a big population of the Burning Man community, and the whole Crucible community in Oakland,” a nonprofit industrial arts school.

“There’s nowhere else in the world that has the support of a place like the Exploratorium, with its Tinkering Studio. Or the Tech Museum,” she said.

Crews have been on site all week to lay out and build this “instant city,” with trucks and tents and tables to contain the happy mayhem.

The making of Maker Faire starts in January, said co-creator Sherry Huss. About 2,000 people apply to participate, of which 1,200 are selected. Rejected are folks whose projects are too commercial, or not “family friendly,” or too crafty. T-shirt peddlers are directed to another venue.

Instead, organizers favor flying robotic machines, competitive lock-pickers, cupcake cars, desktop machining tools, an electronic giraffe, 3-D springs and spider-like drones in combat.

One of this year’s favorites is Quin Etnyre, the 14-year-old founder of Qtechknow and creator of the Qduino Mini, a small processing board compatible with the popular Arduino, the electronics platform used by tech hobbyists around the world. The Pismo Beach youth has been developing his Qduino Mini project for more than a year, detailing everything from the design and layout of the printed circuit board, to Web page design and marketing plans.

Another Faire favorite is Iseman.

“He is very smart, with a great community spirit … a guy who keeps pushing in a positive way — a true ‘maker’ — whose currency is his ideas,” said Huss.

A middle-class kid from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Iseman grew up in a traditional suburban home, the eldest of five. Now he thrives in a 160-square-foot abode that once traversed the vast Pacific Ocean but is now fully renovated, with sink, shower, stove, solar panels and Wi-Fi.

“I love the aesthetic — it’s slightly Blade Runner,” he said. “But it works for me.”

Angered by the Bay Area’s escalating cost of property, he traded in his $4,200-a-month, two-bedroom Mission apartment for a $2,300 container from the Port of Oakland.

“Housing prices are insane. … Housing is long overdue for innovation,” like the automobile and computer fields, he said. He wants cities to exempt very small structures — under 250 square feet, perhaps — from some building code requirements.

His first step: Cut out the windows, then find and install used windows on Craigslist. Then add insulation and plywood walls. Next: a sink and clothes washer, powered from solar panels and a water hookup. Then install a loft bed, wood floor and cubicles for belongings.

Furniture is still on his “wish list,” so guests sit on the floor.

His surreptitious community of container neighbors include a Facebook engineer and an artist.

Construction noise and toilets — self-composting contraptions — angered a neighbor and got the attention of authorities, who went after the “illegal settlement” for code violations and forced Iseman and friends to vacate their one-third acre West Oakland parcel, which they had bought for $30,000.

Now he’s strategizing the next step in his Container Colony of the future, turning today’s empty parking lots into neighborhoods.

He’s built about 10, so far. His new business offers three approaches: downloadable plans, for free; no-frill container “kits,” packed with the essentials and delivered door-to-door, for $5,000 to $9,000, and fully-finished models for $12,000 to $29,000, ready for instant off-the-grid living.

Maker’s Faire could offer yet more ideas — and future customers, he hopes.

“People are thinking about how to live more sustainably, and how to change rules to encourage innovation,” he said.

“Maker’s Faire is the encouragement we need to do that.”

Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 650-492-4098. Follow her at Twitter.com/Lisa M. Krieger.