Shipping containers for a sustainable habitatperspective

Abstract

Shipping containers have many names: cargo containers, sea cans, metal boxes, freightcontainers. Originally they were constructed, as the name reveals, “tocontain” and store items and mainly to transport goods. Freight containers are built tostrict international quality standards, to survive harsh treatment and a violent life inthe marine environment 1. The main technical detailsregarding containers were specified in an ISO (International Organization forStandardization) standard in January 1968 2. Thehistory of the shipping container starts like any other invention with a simple thought.It takes Malcom McLean, father of the shipping container, over 20 years to realize hisrevolutionary idea for the shipping industry and create a closed transport chain ofuniversal freight container for ships, trucks and trains 3. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that shipping containers have laid thefoundation for globalization and changed the world. Over 95% of the worldwide tradeaffairs are winded up in containers. Today, international freight transportation is nolonger conceivable without containerization. There are approx. 28 million containerscirculating the globe. In the last couple of years up to 3 billion TEU (Twenty-footEquivalent Unit) shipping containers were produced annually, mainly in Asia 4. Most of the freight containers are made out ofCOR-TEN-Steel, which ensures strong carrying and loading capacity and supportswithstanding deformations or corrosion. Once they have served their purpose, shippingcontainers are being recycled as scrap. Another possibility is to be used in thearchitecture as spatial modules. A container’s life is ca.12 years and every year up to1.5 billion TEU are considered disused. The continued availability of shipping containersas a building block is thus assured. Therefore, the construction business with containershas a great potential regarding sustainability. In the last 15 years shipping containerconstruction has become popular for not only living spaces and homes, but for offices,studios, schools – the variety of uses is huge. Containers offer suitable solutions for awide range of uses. The increasing interest in these “icons of globalization” can beexplained with the fact, that they are relatively inexpensive, structurally sound and inabundant supply 6. Using old freight containerscould be seen as an environmental protection strategy and also as a redesign of technicalartefacts. Building with shipping containers is a new more affordable method ofconstruction and design. Due to metamorphose in functionality and meaning of containers –from a cargo box into a habitable space – we realize how big the technical range ofdiversity is. Technique reaches and changes the “Social” through design. The impreciseterm design, which has become a vogue term nowadays, is the interfacebetween technique, body, mind and communication 5.Designed objects are always also symbolic objects for different milieus; design has aneffect on awareness raising, thus on environmental awareness. An ongoing project at RWTHAachen University gives attention exactly to those disused shipping containers, theireventuality and boundary as environmental protection strategies in the living area, aswell as to the well-known cleavage between environmental awareness and environmentalbehaviour. The project focuses on the living situation in Germany and its potential forsuch new and innovative living concepts.