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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.
— Fast Company
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... View full entry
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. — HuffPost
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... View full entry
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. — Block Club Chicago
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — POP Brixton
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... View full entry
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.
— nytimes.com
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... View full entry
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. — dnainfo.com
After doing some calculations, they decided to make it work with shipping containers. View full entry
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. — smartplanet.com
![Left: Paul Rudolph, Oriental Masonic Gardens, New Haven, Connecticut, 1968-71. [Photo via Claire T. Carney Library, University of Massachusetts] Right: Biergarten at Proxy, designed by Envelope A+D, San Francisco, 2012. [Photo by Scott Beale, Laughing Squid]](https://archinect.imgix.net/uploads/l7/l7dsed1e1yot2o9o.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&w=514 "Left: Paul Rudolph, Oriental Masonic Gardens, New Haven, Connecticut, 1968-71. [Photo via Claire T. Carney Library, University of Massachusetts] Right: Biergarten at Proxy, designed by Envelope A+D, San Francisco, 2012. [Photo by Scott Beale, Laughing Squid]")
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? — Places Journal
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... View full entry
