A number of converted shipping containers are going to be offered as temporary accommodation for homeless people in Brighton, UK. Planning permission has been secured by the Brighton Housing Trust for five years to help ease the city’s housing need.
BBC News reports that the thirty six studio homes, which will be linked by walkways, are going to be installed in a former scrap metal yard.
More: Shipping Containers Repurposed To House The Homeless | Design on GOOD
Our archive of container-related projects is here.
From the unconventional and repurposed hotel rooms file.
This time, it’s a “pop-up hotel” that makes use of shipping containers. Currently docked in Antwerp, these lodgings are anything but basic.
The hotel, aptly named, Sleeping Around, claims to employ only ecologically responsible materials.
From their website:
Our pop-up hotel offers […] a compact yet luxurious hotel room, equipped with all the mod cons: a box-spring bed, rain shower, iPod docking station and air conditioning – all contained in a 20ft recycled sea container.
More over at Contained, the “all things container” Tumblr of our own Molly Block, here.
In Atlanta: A residential duplex was fabricated from 12 refurbished shipping containers.
The three-story building on the left was completed in 2007; the one on the right was added in 2011.
The above link — you can open it on YouTube here — shows a tour of the newer 1,800-square-foot container home (the one on the right). The house’s living space, located on the top floor, features an open floor plan, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a balcony. Energy-efficient features include rain barrels for collecting water, and window tinting and a white rubber roof membrane that help keep the building cooler by deflecting heat.
Architect Francis Kirkpatrick designed the project for owner Glen Donaldson.
Project photo below via the project’s structural engineers, Runkle Consulting.
More info about the building project here, via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Happy to add this example to the Tumblr gallery of cargotecture projects.
![In cargotecture news:
Plans are progressing to build the first multifamily residential project in the U.S. from retired shipping containers.
The $3.4 million, 20-unit condo complex, first proposed in 2008, is expected to break ground in Detroit near Wayne State University in 2013.
The project “would stack empty containers four high, cut in windows and doors, install plumbing, stairways and heating, and add amenities such as balconies and landscaped patios.” Units are expected to range from 850 to 1,920 square feet in size.
Prices still are being determined but should run about 5% less than similarly sized condos in today’s market, [Leslie Horn, CEO of Three Squared, the Detroit firm that is building the project] said.
Empty shipping containers have been used extensively in Europe to create housing and projects like office space for entrepreneurs and other types of projects. But their use is much rarer in the U.S. [Examples of housing projects outside the U.S.: here, here, and here; and a multistory office in the U.S.: here.]
But backers of such projects say that it’s a good way to recycle empty containers that stack up in port cities around the world because shippers find it too expensive to send them back empty to China or other ports of origin.
If successful, the prototype project in Detroit could lead to widespread other uses of empty containers, Horn said, including student or emergency housing, temporary construction offices, and infill houses in urban neighborhoods.
(via Detroit firm aims to use shipping containers for Midtown residences | Detroit Free Press | freep.com)
Multi-Housing News adds: The project’s 90-plus shipping containers will be outfitted with energy-efficient systems that include ductless heating and air systems, tankless water heaters, and other amenities that “combine to reduce each unit’s energy costs by up to 80 percent.”
More photos on the Web site of the project’s designer, Detroit architect Steven Flum, here.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdufy47Vq61qzv12bo1_r1_400.jpg)
In cargotecture news:
Plans are progressing to build the first multifamily residential project in the U.S. from retired shipping containers.
The $3.4 million, 20-unit condo complex, first proposed in 2008, is expected to break ground in Detroit near Wayne State University in 2013.
The project “would stack empty containers four high, cut in windows and doors, install plumbing, stairways and heating, and add amenities such as balconies and landscaped patios.” Units are expected to range from 850 to 1,920 square feet in size.
Prices still are being determined but should run about 5% less than similarly sized condos in today’s market, [Leslie Horn, CEO of Three Squared, the Detroit firm that is building the project] said.
Empty shipping containers have been used extensively in Europe to create housing and projects like office space for entrepreneurs and other types of projects. But their use is much rarer in the U.S. [Examples of housing projects outside the U.S.: here, here, and here; and a multistory office in the U.S.: here.]
But backers of such projects say that it’s a good way to recycle empty containers that stack up in port cities around the world because shippers find it too expensive to send them back empty to China or other ports of origin.
If successful, the prototype project in Detroit could lead to widespread other uses of empty containers, Horn said, including student or emergency housing, temporary construction offices, and infill houses in urban neighborhoods.
(via Detroit firm aims to use shipping containers for Midtown residences | Detroit Free Press | freep.com)
Multi-Housing News adds: The project’s 90-plus shipping containers will be outfitted with energy-efficient systems that include ductless heating and air systems, tankless water heaters, and other amenities that “combine to reduce each unit’s energy costs by up to 80 percent.”
More photos on the Web site of the project’s designer, Detroit architect Steven Flum, here.
A team of four Arizona State University students is producing its first two portable clinics, modified freight shipping containers outfitted with medical supplies; on- and off-grid power hook-ups; ventilation; insulation; access to potable water; and optional add-ons like solar power and air conditioning. One of the clinics, a maternity suite promised to the nonprofit Sustainable Resources Limited, will be stocked and shipped to Kenya with birthing supplies and beds for two mothers.
Arizona State Students Are Upcycling Shipping Containers into Health Clinics - Design - GOOD
Previously on Unconsumption: Containers To Clinics.
At ART HK — the 2012 Hong Kong International Art Fair:
Artist Yin Xiuzhen’s “Black Hole” — large-scale installation of pieces of a used shipping container assembled, with neon, into a round-cut diamond shape.
(photo via ART HK here)
We haven’t mentioned new uses for shipping containers in a while. After containers are retired from carrying cargo, the units often are used on land for storage or are refurbished for architectural purposes, a.k.a. cargotecture. This artistic reuse — where the heavy-gauge corrugated steel’s cut into pieces — is pretty unique.
We often feature examples of palletecture and cargotecture — wood shipping pallets and metal shipping containers repurposed for architectural uses — though seldom come across the two incorporated into one project. One of the few examples involving both types of repurposing can be found in this earlier Unconsumption post about Infiniski’s Manifesto House in Chile.
As you can imagine, I was psyched to learn during my most recent trip to Dallas about the opening of The Foundry, a beer garden in the Oak Cliff neighborhood, which features BOTH palletecture and cargotecture, among other examples of creative reuse.
The Foundry’s stage, designed by Gary Buckner, is constructed from used pallets, and several decommissioned shipping containers furnished with second-hand items serve as lounge areas.
For additional information on The Foundry and attached restaurant Chicken Scratch, see this D Magazine review. From writer Carol Shih: “Just about every piece of furniture and design — from the hanging lamps fashioned out of crates to the wall decor — is a lesson in recycling.”
Well done, isn’t it?
Photos, top to bottom, used with permission from Flickr user Bullneck and Instagram users Megan Smith (@megan_sm on Instagram), Matt Shelley (@mattshelley), Fred Pena (@alfredchingon), and @redondallas. Bottom photo via D Magazine.
![More cargotecture — Colorado house constructed from shipping containers
This project questions the need for excessive space and challenges occupants to be efficient. Two [retired] shipping containers saddlebag a taller common space that connects local rock outcroppings to the expansive mountain ridge views. The containers house sleeping and work functions while the center space provides entry, dining, living and a loft above.
The project is planned to be off-the-grid using solar orientation, passive cooling, green roofs, pellet stove heating and photovoltaics to create electricity.
Designed by Studio H:T, whose principals were involved in the design of this University of Colorado student project built from pallets and various found materials.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m37l00KdcV1qzv12bo1_r2_400.jpg)
More cargotecture — Colorado house constructed from shipping containers
This project questions the need for excessive space and challenges occupants to be efficient. Two [retired] shipping containers saddlebag a taller common space that connects local rock outcroppings to the expansive mountain ridge views. The containers house sleeping and work functions while the center space provides entry, dining, living and a loft above.
The project is planned to be off-the-grid using solar orientation, passive cooling, green roofs, pellet stove heating and photovoltaics to create electricity.
Designed by Studio H:T, whose principals were involved in the design of this University of Colorado student project built from pallets and various found materials.
This isn’t your great-grandmother’s one-room red schoolhouse …
The Vissershok School — located near Cape Town, South Africa, in a rural area where most students are “children of farm workers and underprivileged communities” — is built from a used shipping container.
Tsai Design Studio, mentioned previously here, designed the project.
For more container reuse, check out the Unconsumption archive here.
The repurposing of decommissioned shipping containers is a recurring theme here on the Unconsumption blog.
To add to the gallery of container projects we’ve featured, there’s this impressive-looking pop-up installation for Google, set up in Long Beach, California, for the 2012 TED conference. (Fun fact: Unconsumptioneer Brian Jones is currently there.) Seems pretty fitting, given that Long Beach is home to one of the world’s busiest seaports, handling, on average, the equivalent of more than 16,000 containers each day.
Friend of Unconsumption Boxman Studios (mentioned previously here), which creates event venues out of containers, constructed the “Google Garage” from five, 40’-foot-long containers. After the TED conference ends, Boxman will reuse the containers for other clients’ projects.
Boxman tells us to be on the lookout for a shipping container installation in Austin for this year’s South by Southwest events.
More: Boxman Studios | We’re Feeling Lucky With Google (at TED!)
Tsai Design studio repurposes a 12 metre long shipping container into sports centre in Capetown South Africa.
Five shipping containers are the primary components of the Kansas City home of industrial designer Debbie Glassberg.
The 40-feet-long by 8-feet-wide containers are either 9.5 or 12 feet tall (most containers are only 8 to 10 feet tall), giving the 2,600-square-foot residence a more expansive feel. Several decks, light-colored finishes, and large expanses of glass add to the airy atmosphere. Two bedrooms and one full bathroom sit upstairs; the kitchen, living area, small guest bedroom (where the pink-ish wall can be seen above), two full bathrooms, and an office are located on the ground level.
Glassberg (a former Mattel employee whose background includes dollhouse design) designed the home via her current firm, Home Contained, in association with BNIM Architects; she has occupied the residence since 2010.
Various post-completion photos, including several showing the project’s exterior, are posted here. Video here, filmed during construction in 2009.
Lovely results, no?
