Container City
Container City™ is one of Urban Space Management’s latest projects, providing a highly versatile system of stylish but affordable accommodation for a range of uses — offices, studios, workshops, live–work, residential, educational, and even a pre-school nursery in Harlesden.
So far on site there is Container City 1 and 2 as well as the Riverside Building. The accommodation is built from recycled shipping containers arranged in modular groups. The walls are only 2mm thick but because they are corrugated they are immensely strong. Each 40 x 8 foot container weighs in at only four tonnes but is able to take up to ten times that in loading, and remains rigid when stacked.
These stacks only require support at the corners, so the cost of foundations is minimised. Even the stair and lift towers are created from 40 foot containers standing on end, and balconies formed in open end-doors. The porthole style windows are used for structural efficiency, but are turned to aesthetic advantage and are an essential part of the buildings’ character.
The Container City scheme costs less than half that of equivalent conventional building, and over 80% is made from recycled material. Recycling is used wherever possible at Trinity Buoy Wharf – for example, the steel planters for the “orchard” of small trees are made from part of the Thames lighter used for the Jubilee Pier.
Visit the Container City™ website at: www.containercity.com