Superbox

As the advocates of the brief High Tech design movement of the 1980s -and the Eameses 40 years before them- well demonstrated, there is much practical potential in the creative reuse of industrial products in the application of housing. This was a natural area of exploration for me because industrial structures have always tended to be made with far more robust materials than is typical of housing and, as a result, make extensive use of non-toxic steel, aluminum, and concrete. And contemporary industry tends to generate a very steady stream of cast-offs with potental for reuse given a little ingenuity. Nowhere is this more obvious than with the ISO standard marine shipping container which, in communities where trade deficits are the norm, often accumulate in great numbers and thus have inspired much invention.

As a structural system, the shipping container has many virtues. Containers interlock using a variety of connectors which fit into their socketed corner blocks and allow them to be linked in three dimensions with stacks up to ten containers high. Containers are clear-span steel box frames at the 20' length size and are structurally sound with or without their wall and roof skins, thus allowing the sides of the box to be modified in any fashion without presenting any loss of structural integrity. The dimensions are a little odd in that non-parallel interconnections work only in combinations of 2:5 for 20' containers or 1:5 for 40' ones. In other words, if you want to rigidly connect containers side-to-end one must have five ends side-by-side to connect to one 40' container or two 20' containers linked end-to-end. Many types of fixtures designed to plug-into the container corner blocks are commonly available. Clamps used to mount antennas for telecom shelters and access ladders can accommodate innumerable other attachments. Bulkhead king-pin blocks normally welded to ship deck plates to let them carry containers can be attached to a great variety of foundation systems. A variety of lift devices and dollies -some with integral motors- can be attached to the sides of containers to make them self-mobile.

container housing concepts

The reuse of shipping containers for housing has been of endless interest to architects, designers, and tinkerers worldwide for as long as the standardized containers have existed and such housing is common everywhere in the world -EXCEPT the US. Why this should be an oddity only here is something of a mystery considering the shipping container's ubiquity and common use here as an industrial enclosure. Whatever the hang-up may be, there are people here who have at least explored its housing possibilities, even if none have ever managed to realize anything as practical as what their counterparts in the rest of the world routinely do. The most well known American designer to have explored this concept is Colin Reedy who wrote an excellent article on the subject of containers used as the basis of Nomadic Housing for the EscapeArtist.Com web site. (http://www.escapeartist.com/efam16/Nomadic_Housing2000.html) The concept of Nomadic Housing -housing designed for rapid demountability and easy transport- has been of particular interest to the growing international Expatriate community who are intrigued by the idea of economical and practical housing which can be routinely transported from place to place around the globe along with all of an individual's possessions. The shipping container suits this idea quite well, though in practice no turnkey approach to this application has developed since there is no specific industry serving it -the corporate world generally oblivious to the existence of the possible market.

Global Nomadic Housing - Colin Reedy

Shipping containers have been an endless source of fascination to me because of the versatility of their simple modular forms and their inherently non-toxic composition of steel and aluminum. Most useful of all are the so-called Hi-Cube containers which typically feature a 9' height and are commonly used for refrigerated containers that feature heat cured polyurethane or styrofoam foam core aluminum and steel sandwich panel walls and aluminum plank decking. These things are like ready-made non-toxic -or at least low-toxic- buildings and the typical cost for used ones of about $3000 per 40' container is quite compelling. I've studied many concepts for their conversion, not only as non-toxic housing but as the basis of modular structures for eco-villages and small marine colony structures for which the idea of recycling industrial cast-offs is very appropriate. The potential range of applications are vast -aided by the increasing diversity of specialized function containers which offer unique reuse possibilities. For instance, half-height open top containers can function as raised bed farming containers, liquid cargo containers can serve as water storage tanks, live fish transport containers could be made into swimming pools, gas cargo containers can be used for propane or compressed air storage, bulk dry materials containers can be turned into composters or loose dry material storage bins, and the list goes on and on. Even vehicles could potentially be built from these. What is most compelling about these in the context of an eco-community application is the fact that their transportability allows for community development using dispersed labor. Members of a group can adapt containers wherever small concentrations of vollunteer labor can be found and then transport the finished product to the destination eco-community for simple plug-in attachment. A whole recycling industry can be built on this concept.

modular eco-village concepts

In exploring the application of containers to non-toxic housing I was at first very concerned with the question of how to overcome the limited width offered by the containers. Combining containers into larger clear-span room units is commonly done overseas but the jointing techniques used are not widely documented and the few companies in the US that do container conversions for industrial applications seemed to have little understanding of it. I eventually learned some usable techniques but they involved extensive custom welding work which few companies here seemed willing to do at any reasonable cost. In general, those handful of companies that did do container conversions here were quite willing to make a housing unit to my specifications but at ridiculously high fees. The lowest cost quote I could find was $15,000 per 20' container -not including the container... This was clearly impractical at my income level and so I have more recently focussed on the possibilities of using containers in a less modified form, perhaps reducing the work required to adapt them to a level where I alone might be able to perform the necessary work. My study of the technologies of the Urban Nomadics movement and the current T-slot and Box Beam building systems suggested that there were simple low-labor low-cost approaches to this. Also, the RV and marine equipment markets have produced a fairly good collection of window and door products designed specifically to work with much the same kind of foam-core sandwich panel material used on refrigerated containers. But the 8' wide width of the containers is a severe limit on possible layouts and the need to retrofit utilities to the surface of the wall panel material complicated utilities organization and concealment. After some study I found that the most efficient approaches for un-joined containers seemed to be those that confined fixtures primarily to one side of the structure, suggesting another variation of the Supercabinet concept where a whole-wall unit built of Box Beam and filling up half the container width could be fashioned to integrate all the functional elements of the home.

Altogether the conversion seemed to me to be a simple enough process. Two or three 40' Hi-Cube containers, linked by doorways in their sides rather than a sealed full-side joint, seemed sufficient for a permanent home, these optionally supported by one or two additional containers stripped of their walls to serve as lenai-like porches. But it soon became obvious to me that, as simple as this concept was, the large size of the containers was a serious problem. My current location in a typical suburban bedroom community made working with such large building blocks impractical. The elderly relative I currently live with refused to entertain the notion of these big boxes cluttering the lawn -and chances are the neighbors would be likewise averse especially since, at my income level, the conversion process could take some years. Also, I could find no local rental sources for any container handling equipment, let alone the more sophisticated compact equipment that would make this doable by a small number of people. There simple was no practical way to work with these things where I was and so I have been forced to shelve this concept. But it is still a compelling one. If I could get the necessary help from people with the space and tools to handle these things this could be one of the easiest and cheapest solutions to the non-toxic housing crisis. Alas, I just have the misfortune of being stuck in a country that is 20 years behind the rest of the world -even the Third World- in the creative reuse of these.

I also considered the use of stripped containers as a basic structural system for a pavilion style home. The advantage to this is that the primary structure of the home is very cheap, quick, and easy to assemble on prefab foundation piers. Enclosure would be accomplished by fitting commercial window framing and sliding doors parallel to the container frame members and topping the lot with sandwich panel roofing attached to flanges welded or clamped to the top frame members. But since much of the frame is 'indoors' and containers go through numerous re-paintings during their duty life the container frames would have to be stripped to their bare metal and repainted with non-toxic paint, this reducing the savings from recycling containers. That's work I could never do myself and so this idea also had to be shelved.

Since size is the chief problem with these containers, I have been looking for smaller cast-off industrial/shipping containers which might be easier to handle. If there were some common box akin to an ISO shipping container with an 8-9 foot cubed size this would be ideal but so far I've found nothing like this.