Shipping container architecture is a form of architecture using steel intermodal containers (shipping containers) as structural element, because of their inherent strength, wide availability and relatively low cost.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Examples
Many structures based on shipping containers have already been constructed, and their uses, sizes, locations and appearances vary widely.
When futurist Stewart Brand needed a place to assemble all the material he needed to write How Buildings Learn , he converted a shipping container into office space, and wrote up the conversion process in the same book.
In 2006, Southern California Architect Peter DeMaria , designed the first two story shipping container home in the U.S. as an approved structural system under the strict guidelines of the nationally recognized Uniform Building Code (UBC). This home was the Redondo Beach House and it inspired the creation of Logical Homes, a cargo container based pre-fabricated home company (Logical Homes Website). In 2007, Logical Homes created their flagship project - the Aegean, for the Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Several architects, such as Adam Kalkin have built original homes, using discarded shipping containers for their parts or using them in their original form, or doing a mix of both.
In 2000, the firm Urban Space Management completed the project called Container City I in the Trinity Buoy Wharf area of London. The firm has gone on to complete additional container-based building projects, with more underway. In 2006, the Dutch company Tempohousing finished in Amsterdam the biggest container village in the world: 1,000 student homes from modified shipping containers from China.
In 2002 standard ISO shipping containers began to be modified and used as stand-alone on-site wastewater treatment plants . The use of containers creates a cost-effective, modular, and customizable solution to on-site wastewater treatment and eliminates the need for construction of a separate building to house the treatment system.
Brian McCarthy, an MBA student, saw many poor neighborhoods in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico during an MBA field trip in the 2000s. Since then he developed prototypes of shipping container housing for typical maquiladora workers in Mexico.
Markets
Empty shipping containers are commonly used as market stalls and warehouses in the countries of the former USSR.
The biggest shopping mall or organized market in Europe is made up of alleys formed by stacked containers, on 170 acres (69 ha) of land, between the airport and the central part of Odessa, Ukraine. Informally named "Tolchok" and officially known as the Seventh-Kilometer Market it has 16,000 vendors and employs 1,200 security guards and maintenance workers.
In Central Asia, the Dordoy Bazaar in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, almost entirely composed of double-stacked containers, is of comparable size. It is popular with travelers coming from Kazakhstan and Russia to take advantage of the cheap prices and plethora of knock-off designers.
Other uses
Shipping containers have also been used as
- Press Boxes
- Emergency hurricane shelters for thoroughbred horses
- Concession Stands
- Fire Training Facility
- Military Training Facility
- Emergency shelters
- School buildings
- Urban homes
- Rural homes
- Apartment and office buildings
- Artists' studios
- Stores
- Large houses
- Moveable exhibition spaces on rails
- Telco hubs
- Bank vaults
- Medical clinics
- Radar stations
- Shopping malls
- Sleeping rooms
- Recording Studios
- Abstract art
- Transportable factories
- Data centers (in the form of Project Blackbox)
- Experimental labs
- Clandestine Cannabis gardens
- Combatant Temporary Containment (ventilated)
- Bathrooms
- Showers
- Workshops
- Intermodal sealed storage on ships, trucks, and trains
- House Foundations on unstable seismic zones
- Elevator/stairwell shafts
- Block roads and keep protesters away
For housing and other architecture
Containers are in many ways an ideal building material because they are strong, durable, stackable, cuttable, movable, modular, plentiful and relatively cheap. Architects as well as laypeople have used them to build many types of buildings such as homes, offices, apartments, schools, dormitories, artists' studios and emergency shelters. They are also used to provide temporary secure spaces on construction sites and other venues on an "as is" basis instead of building shelters.
Phillip C. Clark filed for a United States patent on November 23, 1987 described as "Method for converting one or more steel shipping containers into a habitable building at a building site and the product thereof". This patent was granted August 8, 1989 as patent 4854094. The diagrams and information contained within the documentation of this patent appear to lay the groundwork for many current shipping container architectural ideas. Even so, this patent does not appear to have represented a novel invention at its time of filing (Paul Sawyers described extensive shipping container buildings that were used on the set of the 1985 movie Space Rage Breakout on Prison Planet ).
During the 1991 Gulf War, containers saw considerable nonstandard uses not only as makeshift shelters but also for the transportation of Iraqi prisoners of war. Holes were cut in the containers to allow for ventilation and there were no reported ill effects from this method. Containers continue to be used for military shelters, often additionally fortified by adding sandbags to the side walls to protect against weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades ("RPGs").
The abundance and relative cheapness of these containers during the last decade comes from the deficit in manufactured goods coming from North America in the last two decades. These manufactured goods come to North America from Asia and, to a lesser extent, Europe, in containers that often have to be shipped back empty, or "deadhead", at considerable expense. It is often cheaper to buy new containers in Asia than to ship old ones back. Therefore, new applications are sought for the used containers that have reached their North American destination.
See also
- Containerization
- Prefab
References
- ^ DeMaria Design Associates - Home
- ^ Quik Build LLC - quik house
- ^ Tempohousing
- ^ Keetwonen: student housing in Amsterdam
- ^ SC Brochure 4pg (more SC specific).pub
- ^ "Shipping containers could be 'dream' homes for thousands." CNN . Accessed September 24, 2008.
- ^ Ironbank a towering success with three awards - The New Zealand Herald , Wednesday 14 October 2009
Further reading
- Kotnik, Jure (2008). Container Architecture. p. 240. ISBN 978-8496969223
- McLean, Will (ed). Quik Build: Adam Kalkin's ABC of Container Architecture , Bibliotheque McLean, London 2008
- Sawyers, Paul (2005, 2008). Intermodal Shipping Container Small Steel Buildings. p. 116. ISBN 978-1438240329
- Broeze, Frank (2002). "The Globalisation of the Oceans: Containerisation from the 1950s to the Present". International Journal of Maritime History (Canada: International Maritime Economic History Association) 15 : 439–440. ISSN 0843-8714.
- Helsel, Sand (September-October 2001). "Future Shack: Sean Godsell's prototype emergency housing redeploys the ubiquitous shipping container". Architecture Australia . http://www.architectureaustralia.com.au/aa/aaissue.php?article=11&issueid=200109&typeon=2 . Retrieved 2007-10-13 .
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