Abstract
The container city in London uses shipping containers to design homes and offices and some restaurants. This has been done severally in parts of eastern London. The first installation was the Trinity Buoy Wharf, done in 2001. Since the first construction of the container house, the building got so famous that several people started to demand for the houses. Eric Reynolds founded the urban management space to cater for the rising demands the container house in London. The container houses are quite affordable compared to the ordinary houses. The rent goes for less than 100 pounds and the cost of building a container is approximately 50,000 pounds. The containers also have a beautiful design that attracts most people. In this paper, I will discuss how the containers have managed to solve the problem of shortage of housing in London. I will also discuss how the containers came to existence, how they were constructed, and the impact they had in London. The shipping containers have a monocoque shape and create a strong structure that can carry heavy loads. The shipping containers are often interconnected to achieve a desired shape or pattern. I will also give my opinions on how to construct the container houses. These will include one most significant procedure to be followed while designing and constructing the container house like steel cutting, framing and welding. However, steel framing is not always applied in designing small container houses. The windows of the container houses are often designed in round shape, and are cut when the shipping containers have been delivered on the site.
London Container city
Introduction
The Container City in London has an urban space management trademark and several shipping architecture containers. It utilizes shipping containers to create offices and accommodation at a fair cost. There have been several installations of buildings by use of the same technique that is set in Eastern London. The first installation of the Container City was done in 2001 within four days. Within five months, it fitted out at Trinity Buoy Wharf. There was an expansion of the second phase of the Container City II in 2002. In 2005, the same office constructions were repeated in the same site in Riverside Building (Kalkin and Will 89). The Riverside Building has been constructed from seventy-three containers, and it offers twenty units available in five floors. This method also used in constructing of the Container Learn, which is a project conducted in 2011 for the college of Tower Hamlets. This construction was done in a site that had little space and offered twelve more classrooms. With the same construction technique, the company has now finished sixteen projects. The advantage of this technique of building and construction is that when there is a requirement for land use, the containers can always be used repeatedly.
The headquarters of USM in the Wharf has the largest number of the Container structure construction. This flexible modular technique is an exceptional example of the application of recycle. It is advantageous because it reduces the expenses and the period of construction. It also has a strong framework that is light in weight, and this limits the use of concrete that has proved to be damaging to the environment. In Eastern London, there are communities that use the Container City as homes, offices, and studios (Kalkin and Will 91). The urban lifestyle of the UK and any other modern lifestyle are often characterized by mobility, migration, and overpopulation. There also natural catastrophes that may leave numerous people without homes. The idea of homes in the urban world is more fluid and less constant than it may have been in the last century, and this makes people think of how much space they require for their homes. Container houses are flexible, green, and fast compared to the traditional ones. These houses offer modern residents any size of the house that they may prefer. In fact, the steel box house offers a stylish way of living.
Summary
There is no uncertainty that the invention of this shipping container brought a revolution to the global markets as people know it. Before the development of the box, there was a lot of inefficiency in the shipping industry. When cargo arrived at the waterfront, it was lifted to ships without any order, then loaded or sorted. Theoretically speaking, there was meaningful sorting of the cargos as the first products were those that would be unloaded (Kalkin and Will 91). However, this loading or unloading did not have any standard procedures. In addition, the unloading or loading of a ship could have taken hours with loose products put together with sacks, barrels, and crates that had to be arranged in order to prevent any extra shifting during the trip of the boat. This procedure would lose money for the owners of the ship and for the company that transported the products. During the 1950s, it was getting evident to the people in the industry that the system was getting more and more inefficient and expensive.
The founder and owner of Mc Lean Shipping Company Malcolm McLean had a plan of saving the costs at every turn and reducing the inefficiencies in all possible ways for him. He had a problem with the amount of time spent during loading and unloading at the port, which he thought needed to be solved. Initially, he had planned to use the designed boats to have tracks on them, but he recognized that this would bring wasted space that could be used to fill more cargo. Then he started to conduct experiments with the simple idea of eliminating the containers of the truck and putting them on the ship. He was not the first person to think of the idea. This is because boats had been taking railroad cars from the United States to Cuba for a number of years. However, McLean was the first man to be successful in interchanging the cargo boxes. This idea was widely accepted and adopted immediately.
Following the numerous years of debates, committees, takeovers, and lawsuits, the original metal box design of Mc Lean passed the process of containerization. This was a process of standardizing a container system with the international standards, or ISO. From this point onwards, all the containers were to be almost the same to allow easy interchangeability amongst the transport modes. In the same way stated before, this idea brought a revolution to the shipping industry (Kalkin and Will 93). This brought the ability to load and unload a crate from a cargo ship with the help of huge cranes and little power requirement This happened in Boston, and the cargo ship could now move the cargos to Rotterdam before it was load to a train and sailed to Zurich without unloading the cargo at an affordable cost. This was a benefit to all the cargo industries.
However, this idea also had disadvantages. In the past ten or twenty years, there has been a development of a substantial imbalance in shipping in a worldwide scale. This has brought a number of complex scenarios. For instance, Hong Kong and China have more exports than imports, and it seems quite cheap for them to develop new shipping containers. The United States has also managed to create more than 700,000 shipping containers since 2005. Inescapably, people started to notice that there were too many containers, and it seemed that a container may also be used as a room. This recognition brought the complex of the Container City.
Locations of the Container City
Buoy Wharf homes in Docklands, London. Container City exists on Trinity Buoy Wharf, London. The location is at the convergence of the Thames and the Bow Creek. The urban space management charters this project. The organization intended to build up the Container city as an artistic and a cultural center. It has one of only London’s lighthouses. These lighthouses may not be presently functional, but it is a home to a fascinating and long player performance piece (Kalkin and Will 96). The Container City has a history of one of the main maintenance of buoy and London’s sites for testing the area. While it is a dockside, it seems that it has never been used for a noteworthy amount of shipping.
It can also be said that the most noteworthy driving force besides the houses is the construction. For one to understand the buildings, he/she must first understand the fundamental design ideas that have come out for the container designs. The containers have a uni-body or monocoque structure. It has a strong frame of metal that has a thin cladding which provides “skin.” The structure of the buildings is waterproof and is hard enough to survive in the long trips in the sea or ocean. The connection system ensures that the containers do not go tumbling into the sea. For the shipping containers to fulfill the international standards or ISO, the containers must be the same. That is, they must have the same joints that connect them, the ascorner castings.
The designing of the corner casting is meant to work with a device called the twist lock. The twist lock is an effective and simple standard for connecting the shipping containers. This structure is extremely strong. It is also necessary that the connectors survive the rough sea weather. It is also critical to note that as the complex of the Container City is lasting fitting, it does not solely depend on this connection system. The constructions system that benefits people often depends on them to develop temporary structures. In addition, there is also a possibility that the Container City uses the connectors to make sure that the units are aligned before welding is done.
With the simple codes for the container’s fundamental design, there ought to be a number of design rules that may be created for the Container City and other projects. The rules follow a principle that involve stacking of containers on the top of each other or staking them next to each other (London 1871 Census 204). The containers that attach are adjacent or parallel to other containers and may take advantage of the corner castings. There is also a possibility of mis aligning the containers, but this may need the addition of more corner castings. This prevents the thieves from stealing the houses later on. To ensure that there is a tangential expansion, the mirrored segments of the ridged metal may be eliminated from the adjoining containers to give room for the openings and the door frames. The structural reliability offered by the ridged metal requires the utilization of circular windows that keep the strength. The obverse end of the container, by design, is needed to maintain itself when the doors open. For instance, large glass or glazing doors may be placed at this point without removing the support. Since the shipping containers have a uni body construction, some beam can be achieved without any support. However, supports are often used. For bigger spans, bracing is applied to support the floor next to the supports. The containers that are secured with enough support, may turn out to be the elevators of stairwells (Kalkin and Will 99). All of the mentioned concepts are used in designing of the Container City complex. This is evident in the elevations, plans, and several photos of tiny edges and corners that occur in the space.
The individual containers are often designed and planned before they are installed in a grid of solid pile foundations. All of the containers have elements of convectional apartment that has a hardwood floor, insulation, electrical and plumbing services, walls, and gypsum boards. Fundamentally, living in a box house like this is the same as living in a normal apartment, but at a cheaper price. These box houses also look attractive, and this explains the absolute popularity. When the first three floors of the Container city was developed in the year 2001, people liked the houses, and several London artists had opted to build the box houses by 2002 (London 1871 Census 211). This unexpected increase in popularity and demand is what initiated the urban space management to design the box houses. Several artists in London were ready to wait for more than six months for them to live inside the box houses that were designed according to the shipping containers.
During World War II, the Docklands were tremendously bombed. After the Second World War, the Docklands were left as a wasteland. Almost every part of the area offered space for the development of the Brownfield. When one rides on the train through the area, he/she can not help noticing that it is an area from that past that forms a space for the future. For the Container City in London, developers used container construction that was component-based and flexible to develop the city in the Docklands, London, in 2001 (Mitchell 56). When these houses were made, the demand was so high that a second city had to be built in 2002. Eighty percent of the materials used to build the container city were recycled ones. Engineer Happold Buro and architect Lacey Nicholas utilized component pieces to design adaptable working and living spaces for the residents. The Container City is a place for people to live in groups that are satisfied with living on the edge of modern and old industry.
The Container City of Buoy Wharf Houses has big porthole windows and excellent interiors. It has a main room that is approximately even meters by five meters, a kitchen area, and shower room. The buildings appear small from the outside, but big from the inside. The restaurants have the same constructions as those of the Trinity Buoy Wharf. Eric Reynolds, who also founded the management of urban space designed the park, designed the same for stations in Green Park, Spitalfields market, and Camden Lock. The Container City rental housing is approximately 800 pounds every month. The metal containers are more affordable compared to the mortar and brick ones. The containers may rust, but they rarely leak.
The cost of constructing a container may be approximately fifty thousand pounds, which is quite affordable. The cost of renting the Container apartments is also cheap and goes for less than 100 pounds per month. Reynolds argues that the Containers have solved the problem of housing shortage because the shipping containers can never be out of supply. He adds that initially, the people had problems with purchasing land where they would put the containers. This is because there were some greedy land owners who wanted to raise the cost of housing on the Containers (London 1871 Census 213). It is always hard to find housing that is affordable, and that is why Reynolds’ organization is inquiring if there are some more people who need to get the Containers houses. These parents offer their mature children homes, and they can live separately from them. The Trinity Buoy Wharf is the one of London’s lighthouse houses. While it is definitely aesthetic industrially, it has a stylish design that speaks the mind of an architect. The boxes of the Wharfs have to be stacked, and this structural uniformity and utility is what makes the design flexible.
The Container City also applies a color scheme that is the same as those used for steel twhich are exposed to rust, wind, and water. This color scheme prevents destruction from the moisture or water that causes the rusting (Mitchell 67). It also maintains the aesthetics of the cargo and celebrates its functionality. Another significant features or designs of the Container city are the application of round windows. These windows offer a distinct shape and suggest a marine theme. The windows also reduce the stark angularity of the space.
Other examples of Container cities are:
The Multi-Container house in Redondo Beach, CA. This luxurious beach house was designed and constructed by Logical homes and DeMaria design in 2006. The two designs and construction companies combined eight recycled and prefabricated shipping containers of different sizes with conventional building materials. One of the containers even works as swimming pool (Kalkin and Will 103). The house is termite proof, mold-free, and strong. Most parts of its construction took place off site, and this reduces the construction waste. The architects are also working on other affordable projects like a multi-family housing and a community center.
One-Container House. This is a container house designed by LOT-EK, which is a company based in New York. It may also be referred as the modular dwelling house. The construction was done with recycled industrial materials. These houses are meant for people who travel around the globe.
The Temporary Container Shelter, Dublin. These are 4 twenty-foot containers that form the two-story shelter house. The designer responsible for designing the house was Richard Barnwall whose initial motive was to construct the building for workers. By adapting the interiors, it is easy to imagine that it can be used for permanent or temporary housing.
1000-Container Student housing, Amsterdam. This is the world’s biggest container city. It is a student housing project in Amsterdam. The containers were sued to create 1000 dorms for the Dutch students. Tempo Housing launched the project in 2006. It offers all the student amenities, appears hip, and has a rooftop that is used for heat dispersal, rainwater drainage, and insulating the units below the container. This project received an award and has attracted a lot of global attention. The project was so successful that its intended relocation that was just five years was moved to the year 2016.
Constructing of the Container house (According to me)
Building a house is not always easy including small houses. For one to build a house, he/she has to collect all the materials that he/she may need during the construction. However, the construction houses are quite easy and exciting to build (Mitchell 87). Before construction begins, one ought to grade his work including any excavation that is needed for management of storm, utilities, and foundation. There has to be foundation, which is the ground for building the container house. This foundation may be approximately 40 by 24 inch in size. The perimeter has to be trench filled with gravel and also excavated. The precast panels should be dropped by a crane and tied. The panels are exterior membranes that are waterproof and insulation. The foundation walls have to be gravel added, soil compacted, and slab poured.
The shape of the shipping containers is monocoque. The ridged panels, rails, frame, front doors, purlins, and floor create an incorporated structural skin. These structures are sturdy and are meant for carrying floor loads in excess of what is needed for a characteristic home construction. These structures ought not to be modified by penetrating membranes or cutting because this will weaken them. However, if one may want to modify the shipping container by any means, he/she should seek assistance from an architect or a structural engineer. It is vital to maintain the structural integrity of the shipping container when eliminating any of paneling or cutting the container. It is also essential to do steel framing when eliminating parts of the panelized corrugation (Mitchell 79). The roof or column support will be essential depending on the size of the wind loads or the roof.
The most significant processes of constructing and designing the container house are welding, framing, and steel cutting. Characteristically, steel construction is not applied in smaller houses. It is essential to perform the reinforcements and welding out of the site before preparing the containers. If one does not plan to hire a contractor, one should do the container modification off-site. The crane lifts the containers once they arrive on the site. The corner blocks have to be welded to one another to put the containers together. Windows are cut when the shipping containers have been delivered on the site. The doors and windows are framed by a steel section.
Works Cited
Kalkin, Adam, and Will McLean. Quik Build: Adam Kalkin’s Abc of Container Architecture. London: Bibliotheque McLean, 2008. Print.
London 1871 Census. Chilmark: S&N British Data Archive, 2002. Print.
Mitchell, Alex. The Edible Balcony: Growing Fresh Produce in the Heart of the City. London:
Kyle Cathie, 2010. Print.
