Archinect - News

Is shipping container architecture really sustainable?

2023-03-09T13:50:00-05:00

Ultimately, removing containers from the circular economy by retrofitting them into usable spaces could put a strain on the industry and result in the need to use more iron ore, causing even more harm to the environment. Even as the tiny house movement continues to gain popularity and shipping containers are beloved both for their aesthetic appeal and supposed sustainability, it’s worth asking if they’re the right material for this purpose.

While shipping containers do generally keep project costs down owing to labor hours saved, the fit-out of their interiors can add between $20,000 and $150,000 to each construction. Materials such as spray-on foam insulation used in making a container design habitable are rarely among the market’s most sustainable options. The lead-based paint coating typically applied for their seafaring protection against salt water only adds to the toxins produced while the insulation is applied.

University of Edinburgh professor Richard J. Williams said their prevalence was emblematic of “hipster modernity” in a popular 2019 essay, adding “they’re great for doing what they were designed to do, which is transporting stuff. A simple technology, they have helped facilitate global trade like no other. But they’re designed for things, not people."

Nevertheless, as FastCompany reported, the market for container homes is expected to grow to $67.96 billion by the year 2026.

...

Texas continues with plans to use shipping containers as 'makeshift' border wall

2023-01-10T11:57:00-05:00

Gov. Greg Abbott announced in November that the state was moving large shipping containers to the banks of the Rio Grande near downtown El Paso — between official ports of entry — to keep out migrants [...] The Texas containers are on land managed by the International Boundary and Water Commission, the Journal noted. The binational agency enforces treaties between the nations, and evaluates various projects that could affect the Rio Grande.

Abbott’s double-down comes after an announcement from Arizona’s new Governor, Katie Hobbs, that they will dismantle their $80 million wall of shipping containers that were installed in the Colorado National Forest last year.

The plan also encroaches on lands managed by the International Boundary and Water Commission without a permit. This could potentially trigger a change in the flow of water in the Rio Grande floodplain that could cause catastrophic loss of life and other environmental damage, according to the agency.

Texas is adding shipping containers to the US-Mexico border in El Paso.

This is in addition to the razor wire and National Guard.

Together, the strategies are causing illegal immigration at that location to plummet.https://t.co/YPTJlkca5m
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 29, 2022

El Paso's homeless shelter system is currently overwhelmed by the influx, despite the makeshift barriers. The state's spokesperson for emergency management nevertheless told reporters ...

New homes made from repurposed train containers are heading to Chicago's South Side

2022-08-16T18:11:00-04:00

A team of investors has joined forces to bring luxury, energy-efficient container homes to the South Side — and neighbors could move in as soon as this winter. Vincennes Village, a collection of 12 40-foot-long modern, eco-friendly container homes, will be built at 7231 S. Vincennes Ave.

The Vincennes Village initiative, led by project manager Darryl Burton and developer Anthony Casboni, is reportedly the first to bring single-family container homes to Chicago.

Rendering: Vincennes Village

The structures will be built from 8-foot-long train shipping containers, with ceilings spanning nearly 10 feet high. Residences will be 1,200–1,800 square feet in size and two stories tall, including between three to four bedrooms. The new homes are advertised as energy-efficient, featuring motion-activated lights and faucets.

Onyx Architectural Services, a minority-owned Chicago firm, is the lead developer and aims to offer the homes at a starting price of $270,000.

Carlo Ratti Associati complete COVID-19 medical pod prototype

2020-04-21T11:51:00-04:00

Carlo Ratti Associati has completed and installed the first unit of CURA in Turin, Northern Italy. Previously reported on Archinect, we reported on the project, which stands for "Connected Unites for Respiratory Ailments" was spearheaded by Carlo Ratti Associati and Italian architect Italo Rota. The concept utilized shipping containers to develop a modular system of pods for treating COVID-19 patients. Met with confusion, some were uncertain of the feasibility of the proposal, but now the first steps have become a reality.

The plug-in Intensive-Care Pods converted from shipping containers have come to fruition in just four weeks following their initial launch. The speed of the design and production effort come as a result of an international task force that, in addition to designers from Carlo Ratti Associati with Italo Rato, include engineers at Jacobs and health technology company Philips for medical equipment supply.

Initial concept renderings.

With the goal to improve the efficie...

Carlo Ratti and collaborators propose CURA: emergency COVID-19 medical pods inside converted shipping containers

2020-03-30T17:47:00-04:00

In an effort to rapidly boost effective medical response to the devastating COVID-19 outbreak, an international network of architects, engineers, doctors, military experts, and NGOs have developed an open-source solution to convert shipping containers into plug-in Intensive-Care Units. A first prototype is currently being developed in Milan, Italy where the pandemic has hit especially hard.

The project, called CURA (Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments, and also "cure" in Latin), was initiated by Italian architect, engineer, and director of MIT's Senseable City Lab Carlo Ratti with fellow Italian architect Italo Rota.

Image courtesy of CURA/Carlo Ratti Associati.

"CURA is a compact Intensive-Care pod for patients with respiratory infections, hosted in a 20-foot intermodal container with biocontainment (thanks to negative pressure)," explains the project description. "Each unit works autonomously and can be shipped anywhere. Individual pods are connected by an inflatable structure...

Do shipping containers really make for great architecture?

2019-09-16T08:00:00-04:00

A month ago, Dr. Richard J. Williams of the University of Edinburgh expressed his views of the over-hyped shipping container design fad in The New York Times. Describing the fatal flaw in logic widely used to promote the use of shipping containers in recent architectural proposals, Williams writes, "They’re great for doing what they were designed to do, which is transporting stuff. A simple technology, they have helped facilitate global trade like no other. But they’re designed for things, not people."

Throughout the article, Williams, who is a professor of contemporary visual cultures, art, and history, expressed his dislike for the containers and the effort it takes to turn these large transport boxes into habitable structures suitable for human occupation.

Without missing a beat, Williams also dives into the underlying brutality these containers evoke when he writes, "They’re not even particularly cheap. It is often said that they are sustainable, as they adapt an abundant, read...

Shigeru Ban pitches paper tube chapel as temporary Notre Dame replacement

2019-07-10T12:31:00-04:00

La Croix International reports that Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has proposed a temporary chapel to be used for gatherings and religious services in the forecourt of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris while the iconic structure is restored.

The cathedral burned in April 2019, and its future has been the subject of much speculation in the ensuing months as a series of outlandish and conflicting proposals and reconstruction efforts have taken shape.

While not formally approved, Ban's chapel would be made up of wood-wrapped recycled shipping containers and tall paper tubes tied together with wooden trusses and rope. Together, the elements would create a nave capable of holding dozens of people at at time.

The temporary pavilion would be built out of wood-wrapped recycled shipping containers and paper tube columns. Image courtesy of Shigeru Ban Architects.

The vision has not been without controversy, of course. Patrick Bouchain, a French designer who has helped other major cultural insti...

These architects actually proposed building the border wall with shipping containers and micro-housing units

2017-03-09T12:35:00-05:00

What if the border wall proposed by Trump didn’t have to be built in concrete, but rather out of that ubiquitous staple of BArch theses and “pop-up” urbanism, shipping containers? That’s the twee take of DOMO Design Studio, who propose a “softer, gentler” version of the wall, wherein shipping containers line the US/Mexico border. And, if that wasn’t enough, the shipping containers will include other tropes of contemporary urbanism, from retail spaces to micro housing.

Yep, that’s right: DOMO Design Studio imagines you might want to live in a tiny home within a piece of divisive infrastructure! It’s the Bushwick of xenophobic nationalism: a dystopia of hipster consumerism set within an aestheticized landscape populated by the signifiers of the post-industrial economy!

“One of our goals was to not be like the Great Wall of China or the Berlin Wall or any of those typologies that represent division,” principal architect Francisco Llado told Politico. “Our design is not about division bu...

Introducing Bjarke Ingels' floating student housing, "Urban Rigger"

2016-09-22T12:48:00-04:00

Bjarke Ingels has found the elusive silver lining in global sea level rise and the European affordable housing crisis in the form of "Urban Rigger," a series of inexpensive student housing complexes that are designed to float in the sea, especially in those cities which have dense urban cores next to the waterfront. The idea here is to provide students with affordable digs that are close to class while simultaneously making the most out of changing climate conditions and post-industrial port repurposing. The first complete Urban Rigger has already been assembled in Copenhagen.

According to an article in FastCompany, "Each unit, which can house 12 students at once, is composed of modular shipping containers. These modules are powered by a photovoltaic array and use a heat-exchange system that draws upon the thermal mass of water to warm and cool the interiors. Meanwhile, an aerogel developed by NASA insulates the interiors."

For the latest on Bjarke Ingels:

Play "Arkinoid" arcade o...

POP Brixton to open in late May 2015

2015-05-04T12:52:00-04:00

Created from low-cost, low-energy, shipping containers, the refreshing design has a focus on sustainability and efficiency. The converted units will create a mini-city, providing much needed flexible studio, retail, office and workshop space in one of London’s most vibrant communities.

For those of you that miss the Dekalb Market in Brooklyn, a new shipping container campus will be opening later this month in London. Designed by Carl Turner Architects, POP Brixton promises to be an incubator space for start-ups and small business, as well hosting private parties, community film screenings, street kiosks, workshops and more. Construction has already begun on the project with an opening scheduled later this month.

In Brooklyn, Rejecting the Monotony of the Glass-and-Steel Look

2014-02-17T14:49:00-05:00

David Boyle did not build his house out of shipping containers to be hip, though he does live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He left the water pipes exposed not in pursuit of an industrial chic aesthetic, but to make them easier to fix. [...] Their goal, he said, was not style, but a place immune to the neighborhood’s rising rents, built out of materials cheap enough that it could inspire other urban homesteaders to do the same.

Editor's Picks #305

2013-03-05T11:42:00-05:00

vado retro summed up the design "a box within a box and one box the one inside, the inside box is at an angle. oh and there are trees" but Alex Gomez added "Although the facade is superficial, I feel it will succeed in attracting ‘qualitative and quantitative tourist flows in the area,’

News
Over at Bustler.net, Bernard Tschumi Architects unveiled the schematic design for the firm's first work in Italy: ANIMA, a new cultural center in the city of Grottammare. The project has been commissioned by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ascoli Piceno and the Municipality of Grottammare and is expected to be completed by 2016.

In the description of the project, it states: “Could one design a facade without resorting to formal composition? Could one design a facade that would be neither abstract nor figurative, but formless, so to speak? Our motivation in raising these questions was both economic and cultural: At a time of economic crisis, to indulge in formal geometries made out of complex volumetric curves did not seem a responsible option. The time of ‘Iconism’ seemed to be over".

vado retro summed up the design "a box within a box and one box the one inside, the inside box is at an angle. oh and there are trees" but Alex Gomez added "Although the facade is s...

Architect/Contractor Couple Builds Home Out of Shipping Containers in Williamsburg

2013-03-01T12:54:00-05:00

The couple bought a 20-by-40-foot piece of land at 351 Keap St. in 2008, trying to get ahead of the wave of gentrification they feared would soon price them out of Williamsburg. Initially, they planned to build a tiny home out of bricks and mortar, but when they put out a bid, it came back as potentially costing half a million dollars.

After doing some calculations, they decided to make it work with shipping containers.

In cramped Hong Kong, a home under the bridge

2013-02-28T16:12:00-05:00

It is in empty spaces like [under Hong Kong's overpasses] that a group is campaigning for the government to build youth hostels, arts performance venues, offices for small- to mid-sized businesses and, most intriguingly, temporary housing. The group sees this unused land as an opportunity to alleviate Hong Kong’s problem of young people not being able to afford to rent in the world’s most expensive property market.

The Emergence of Container Urbanism

2013-02-13T14:33:00-05:00

In its most far-reaching aspects, container urbanism proposes to take the fundamental organic/architectural condition of containment further by exploring how a boundary might be better coordinated, even merged with the flow of material/ideas. Can containment equate more closely with transmission and, in so doing, position architecture and urbanism more in line with societal mobility and change?

The repurposed shipping container has become a fixture of urban architecture — part of a movement, as Mitchell Schwarzer argues, toward an "urban design as flexible, responsive and electric as the currents that feed it."

On Places, Schwarzer examines the rise of container urbanism from the mid 20th century to now, from Archigram and the Metabolists in the '60s to the pop-up markets and modular housing of today; and he sees in this latest phase a "landmark change" for architecture.

"By facilitating an almost instant building complex," he writes, "the containers put architectural production more in sync with the speed and transitoriness of contemporary life, forcing it to respond to a city’s many complex, adaptive systems."

Forget Big-Box Stores. How About A Big-Box House?

2012-05-30T16:33:00-04:00

A Seattle firm, HyBrid Architecture, has used shipping containers to build cargotecture one-room cabins and multistory office parks. HyBrid co-founder Robert Humble says the containers pose some specific challenges: They have industrial paints and coatings to deal with, and they're just steel boxes with no real frame. But essentially, he says, it's a building material.

NY's Whitney Museum Adds a New Shipping Container Art Studio Designed by LOT-EK

2012-05-16T10:42:00-04:00

This week the Whitney Museum inaugurated a brand new exhibition and studio space designed by shipping container architects-extraordinaire LOT-EK. An ultra-modern and eco-friendly addition to complement the museum's 1960s concrete brutalist construction, the new structure was commissioned by the Whitney as a space where the museum could hold special exhibits and house activities for the Whitney education program.

More about the project here.

With 'Power in a Box,' Princeton students win national competition

2012-05-02T15:34:00-04:00

Converting a standard shipping container into a sustainable source of energy for remote or disaster-torn regions, a team of Princeton University students took top honors in an 18-month national competition that culminated April 21 and 22 on the Washington, D.C., Mall.

DeMaria’s RED BULL Container Building Receives AIA Design Award

2012-01-12T14:09:00-05:00

The American Institute of Architects Long Beach/South Bay Chapter, celebrates outstanding architecture through its Biennial Design Awards Program and last month, Peter DeMaria of DeMaria Design Assoc., picked up an AIA Excellence in Design Award. Recognized for his shipping container based nomadic structure, the RED BULL FMX Digital Lounge/Data Center, DeMaria continues to push the exploration of cargo containers as a viable and sustainable building block.

The RED BULL project, initially set up in Lake Piru, CA, a wild fire prone area with dust/dirt proliferation and 100+ degree temperatures, is now bound for a new RED BULL training destination.

The project program required a rapidly deployed, mobile and fire resistant structure. Housing a data/digital center, an energy drink bar and a spot for the FMX professional freestyle motocross riders to chill out, the two 20’ long cargo containers create a collapsable 480 sq.ft. structure.

Designed for rugged terrain, the diamond pl...

This Starbucks cafe is made from shipping containers

2011-12-08T12:19:00-05:00

We already suspected the Starbucks of the future might be serving a whole lot of juice. Now, it looks like tomorrow’s Starbucks cafes might be rectangular and metal — and look suspiciously like shipping containers.

Shipping containers used for first 'pop-up' shopping mall

2011-12-05T15:57:31-05:00

Built on a temporary site and made entirely from recycled shipping containers, London's latest retail park lays claim to be the world's first ever "pop-up" shopping mall. The aptly-named "Boxpark" opened for business today along a vacant strip of east London's fashionable Shoreditch High Street. It is composed of 60 standard-size shipping containers, stacked two stories high and five rows wide.

Miyagi completes work on temporary housing

2011-11-08T18:24:00-05:00

Both the two- and three-story buildings, quakeproof and made from freight containers, were designed by architect Shigeru Ban. The second and third floors have balconies. Units are built in a staggered fashion to curb noise disturbance.

Information Center for Little Tokyo Design Week: Future City

2011-07-11T19:55:11-04:00

LA architecture office INABA and NYC graphic designers MTWTF have shared with us their design for the information center for Little Tokyo Design Week: Future City. The festival, which opens this Thursday, July 14, celebrates the intersection of Japanese design and technology with experimental architecture in Southern California. The event in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo will feature exhibitions, panel discussions, and other public activities that explore future approaches to urbanism.

The information center displays a video that introduces the festival and which features participating designers and scholars. The exterior of INABA and MTWTF’s project borrows graphic elements of the LTDW theme logo to create a new font. The word ‘info’ is spelled out and repeated as a black and white pattern on three sides. Along the two long interior walls letters of the info font are scaled up into a large graphic that appears to change in form and color as the visitor moves through the space.

...

Heated Controversy Over Shipping Container Prison Cells in Australia

2011-05-09T13:52:41-04:00

In a move that could be viewed by some as a regression to the late 1800s when convicts were shipped from England to Van Diemens Land (Australia), a local prison will next week begin a trial housing inmates within shipping containers converted into maximum security cells. Political proponents calim they are safe, secure and cheap; civil libetarians say they are inhumane and not secure.

Inexpensive yes, but effective?

Staxxon – The Amazing Folding Container

2011-05-03T19:48:24-04:00

Staxxon’s primary objective is to develop a vertical folding and nesting method for empty containers that removes the most expensive commodity container cargo – air – and replaces air with folded and nested empty containers that meet existing CSC structural and weathertight standards for dry containers when unfolded.

Will this lead to a new form of container architecture?