Shipping container architecture
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Shipping container architecture is a less common form of architecture that involves the use of steel shipping containers as the basis for housing and other functional buildings for people, either as temporary housing or permanent, and either as a main building or as a cabin or workshop.
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[edit] Advantages
Shipping containers are in many ways an ideal building material. They are strong and resistant to the elements while also being durable and stackable, simplifying construction. Structures made from them can be disassembled, moved, and then reassembled with ease. They are also quite common and relatively cheap in North America in general and the USA in particular. The relative cheapness is a result of the imbalance in manufactured goods in North American trade. The USA imports much more manufactured goods than it exports and those goods come and go in containers. As a result that country, and to a lesser extent its neighbors in North America, has more empty containers than it can fill and these empties are often made available for uses such as architecture.
[edit] 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 [1], created 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).
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.
The biggest shopping mall or organized market in Europe is made up of alleys formed by stacked containers, on 170 acres of land, between the central part of Odessa in the Ukraine and its airport. 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.
They have also been used as
- 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
- Abstract art
- Transportable factories
- Data centers (in the form of Project Blackbox)
- Experimental labs
- Clandestine Cannabis gardens
[edit] Containers used for housing and other architecture
In North America, containers are in many ways an ideal building material, because they are strong, durable, stackable, cuttable, movable, modular, plentiful and relatively cheap. It is not surprising then that architects as well as laypeople have utilized them to build homes, offices, apartments, schools, dormitories, artists' studios, emergency shelters and many other uses. They are also used to provide temporary secure spaces on construction sites and other venues on "as is" basis instead of building shelters.
During the 1991 Gulf War ("Desert Storm"), 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 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 ("deadhead"), at considerable expense. It is often cheaper to buy new containers in China and elsewhere in Asia, and to try to find new applications for the used containers that have reached their North American cargo destination.
In the middle of Central Asia in the country of Kyrgyzstan, the huge shopping bazaar Dordoi (дордои) is made entirely of shipping containers stacked in a vast labyrinth.[citation needed] Dordoi is the main market for all kinds of goods, especially clothes, purchased in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan's capital and largest city. Travelers come from Kazakhstan to take advantage of the cheap prices and plethora of knock-off designers. The large Seventh-Kilometer Market in Odessa, Ukraine is constructed out of double-stacked shipping containers.
[edit] Further reading
- books
- Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. Penguin Books, 1995.
- Broeze, Frrank. The Globalisation of the Oceans: Containerisation from the 1950s to the Present. International Maritime Economic History Association, 2002.
- journals
- Helsel, Sand. Future Shack: Sean Godsell's prototype emergency housing redeploys the ubiquitous shipping container. Architecture Australia. September-October 2001.
- Myers, Steven Lee. From Soviet-Era Flea Market to a Giant Makeshift Mall. New York Times. May 19, 2006.
