“You think these things are easy to build with,” he said. “There’s actually a bit of complexity to use them.”

But the result can be strikingly attractive. Bistro Box was a winner last April in the Sustainable Land Lab Competition, sponsored by the city and Washington University, to find inventive ways to redevelop vacant lots.

Initially, Bistro Box was promoted as a café run by a rotation of guest chefs. Burse said this week the project still includes a commercial kitchen but has been revised to make it a training space for “culinary endeavors.”

“It’s more of an incubator right now than an everyday restaurant,” he said.

Fundraising continues and backers hope to start Bistro Box construction this year. Still intact is the project’s cargotecture design.

Catherine Werner, the city’s sustainability director, said the Bistro Box project is exciting but adds she’s unsure St. Louis has found its best cargotecture strategy.

“My own preference is to find sustainable solutions that are easily replicable and widely applicable,” she said. “While elaborate combined shipping container construction is intriguing, if I had to choose I would go for simplicity.