In its ideal definition, a shipping container is a container made of metal that is used for the transportation of goods by land or sea. As they are built from sturdy materials, these containers are suitable for rough handling and can be exposed to harsh weather conditions. Apart from serving as a means to transport goods, they are nowadays used by many people for construction of homes, office buildings and many other purposes. Since a variety of options are available for sale, a prior research before making a purchase decision is a good idea.
The list of structures possible with these containers seems endless, some of them being:
- Housing: The simple rectangular shape of the shipping containers make them a perfect choice for construction of residential homes. The choices can be many, starting from a single container made into a small dwelling or a number of containers stacked together for building multi-storied buildings. Some examples of successfully designed container architectural excellence are the Ecopod, the Illy Push Button House and London’s Container City. Containers can be converted into a plush, compact eco-friendly home which is easy to build as well as to shift, if necessary. The carbon footprint is relatively small and the structure is light weight compared to traditional building materials. People also use these structures to add an extra living space to their existing homes.
- Hotels: The use of shipping containers is restricted to home building alone, many business owners are turning their attention to these low cost options nowadays. As containers can be stacked to build very large structures, they are a choice for construction of hotels for many recently. The first hotel constructed with containers in London’s Uxbridge has made use of as many as eighty six containers. Due to high affordability and lightweight materials, the building process was cheaper and faster as compared to conventional construction.
- Office and Commercial Construction: Cargo containers are used as office buildings and commercial retail buildings as well. A perfect example can be the huge Seventh Kilometer Mall in Ukraine which is made from a large collection of used and old cargo containers built into a sprawling mall. Further examples can be the PUMA container store and the Stuttgart container high rise building that are designed keeping in mind both beauty and functionality along with cost advantages.
- Museums: The Nomadic Museum walls are made of shipping containers but it is amazing to see how the perfectly illuminated structure gives the impact of glass and stone work. The striking feature of the museum is that it is a temporary structure that travels around the world for the display of its artifacts’. Another temporary museum is the Container Art Project which is built from old shipping containers. The museum also serves as a platform for performing arts.
- Art: A shipping container can easily be converted into a home or an office by simply adding a door to it; however, it takes a little imagination to carve art of it. Nowadays, artists are creatively sculpting out art by twisting, folding and remodeling pieces of shipping containers into structures of artistic value and sculptures.
- Children’s Playhouse: These durable and sturdy shipping containers can also be given the form of playhouses for children. The Fawood Children’s Centre and the kid’s activity center in Melbourne are two examples of child friendly structures that are made up of environment-friendly shipping containers.
Freight containers have proved to be equally useful as a recycled housing material. As they lose their usefulness within a span of five years, thousands of such containers are abandoned in the yards and their numbers keep on increasing. Due to features like low cost, light weight, durability and easy remodeling capability, a new wave of construction are taking place using shipping containers.
Still want to know more then let’s go to the details and get more information about Used Shipping Containers.
Still want to know more then let’s go to the details and get more information about Used Shipping Containers.
