Transport Container Structure: Debunking the Design Development of the Decade

Virtually 500,000 buildings have arrived on the Port of Los Angeles in 2021. Nicely- not precisely. Over 490,000 transport containers have arrived, although. If there’s a design pattern that has caught the world by storm over the previous decade, it’s been the rise in remodeling transport containers into buildings as a type of structure. However are transport container buildings only a fad that was used to propel concepts about taking each day or is there extra substance to creating large Jenga-inspired buildings?

It’s necessary to notice that transport container structure is hardly a brand new idea. Fascination with them and their potential date again to the late Nineteen Sixties, when Reyner Banham wrote an essay about container ports and their illustration of the technological developments of cities. Banham launched the concept of transport containers being just like a “plug-and-play” kind of structure, praised for his or her industrial-inspired metabolist and simplistic nature. Years later, the first-ever constructed transport container house was designed in 1987 by Phillip Clark, who even patented his private means of turning these uncooked, metal packing containers into occupiable areas. Gaining extra recognition with every passing yr, transport containers have turn into synonymous with structure, closely counting on the much-desired uncooked grunginess and the phantasm of a cheap design answer to perpetuate their enchantment en masse.

One of many many causes individuals like transport container houses is due to their declare to being sustainable. However are they really sustainable, or do they loosely borrow that time period to explain one thing that’s simply in abundance? Transport containers alone can’t be lived in they’re inherently darkish, dingy, and never insulated, and their dimensions make them lower than very best for widespread planning ratios, that means that quite a lot of work goes into remodeling containers into one thing that feels comfy and spacious. What does that imply by way of prices?

Breaking it down, to construct a DIY (Do It Your self) container house, supplies and the container alone run for about 22,000- 32,000 USD. Add within the common price of land at about 5,000-10,000 USD an acre, the precise charges to pay contractors for the work it takes to assemble the house, the prices of allowing, plumbing and electrical energy set up, and different miscellaneous prices, then a transport container house may cost a little upwards of 100,000 USD. Whereas cheaper than the typical worth of a house in the US (which presently prices about 385,000 USD), most transport container houses fall beneath the tiny home pattern and solely measure near 320 sq. ft. Damaged down into price per sq. foot, they examine at a costlier worth than houses in even a few of the most expensive cities within the US. It takes vital effort, cash, and time to take one thing so materialistically sturdy and switch it into one thing with the human situation in thoughts.

Whereas not all the time sensible, and leaning in the direction of the facet of a fad motion that has maybe seen its heyday, there’s something that may be discovered from the final decade of transport container buildings. There’s a sure aesthetic that they lend themselves to, and with that, have generated curiosity in how architects can use the abundance of on a regular basis objects and switch it into one thing that’s worthy of design exploration. And in a world the place there’s all the time a necessity for buildings and revolutionary strategies to assemble them, perhaps we should always as an alternative see this pattern because the kick-start to one thing greater. Let’s not rejoice the container-to-building motion, however go away them to their authentic goal. As an alternative, we will rejoice the dialog across the potential for what this motion might turn into.

Editor’s Notice: This text was initially revealed on Could 28, 2021.