Greener Buildings: Using Recycled Shipping Containers as Building Blocks for Green Construction
By Leslie Guevarra - 9.18.08
ALAMEDA, Calif. -- Amid neck-craning stacks of shipping containers at an Alameda depot, a building crew has worked for the past two weeks to fashion an eco-friendly, two-story structure from five recycled and refurbished steel cubes that had been used to haul cargo.
The project by SG Blocks and the design firm called the Lawrence Group will bring an 1,800-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath home to San Jose, where the structure dubbed Harbinger House will be the centerpiece on the tradeshow floor of the West Coast Green conference next week.
The builders hope the project will hold not only the promise of more business for their nearly 2-year-old firm, but also help fuel an emerging market for commercial construction using recycled shipping containers.
Reclaimed shipping containers have been used for housing and workspace for decades, mostly abroad and often in areas where building materials are scarce. Building with containers is gaining popular currency as a timesaving, more affordable, eco-conscious building alternative to traditional construction, particularly in Europe and the United Kingdom. Earlier this summer, Travelodge opened a 120-room hotel in the greater London area built from 86 containers.
In the U.S., construction with shipping containers, called intermodal steel building units or ISBUs, has largely been residential — a situation that gives rise to ambitions for a commercial market.
"The showhouse is very cool," said Bruce Russell, the managing partner for SG Blocks, which has worked on single-family and multiple-unit residential projects and completed its first office building last fall. "But I think the real impact we're going to have is in the commercial segment. That's really where the system is going to shine."
The company's first non-residential project, which was also the first of its kind in the United States, was a 4,322-square-foot, two-story office building for the U.S. Army. The http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/249en/" href="http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/249en/" target="_blank">249th Engineer Company Operations Building at Fort Bragg, N.C., was made from 12 former shipping containers that are known in the trade as Hi-Cubes — containers measuring 9.5 feet high, 8 feet wide and 40 feet long.