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NY Times Reports Container (Green) Construction Gaining Momentum
1 February 2009 NY Times reports:
The idea came to Christopher Stone as he was looking out the window of his office near Newark Liberty International Airport one day, and his eye fell on shipping containers. Lots of huge, empty industrial containers stacked high, row after row.
"It seemed like they were just waiting there for some new purpose," said Mr. Stone, an Architect. He thought, "Why not create something with them that would benefit people?" And, "how about housing for the poor?"
But when he got a group together from the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects to talk it over, they quickly came to the conclusion that this would be presumptuous.
"So often, those with limited means felt that they are being sequestered and forced into something substandard," Mr. Stone said. "Why would they want to live in shipping containers if no one else does?" And then it occurred to them architects: "we should figure out how to create housing so cool that everybody would want to live in it."
What followed was more than a year of intellectual ferment, during which the group roped in various Newark officials as well as the architecture school at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The result was "Live the Box: An International Design Competition."
Toni L. Griffin, the director of community development for Newark, cam up with a a site in downtown Newark for those who submitted design proposals. The big empty lot opposite the Broad Street train station where the Westing house Electric Company building stood until it was demolished last year.
A Construction company, Skanska USA Building, became a sponsor and put up prize money, the National Portable Storage Association, whose members manufacture containers, followed suit, and other companies made smaller donations.
(Despite the competition, however, the plan to build on the site has not yet advanced beyond the theoretical stages.)
Kim de Freitas, and instructor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, coordinated the contest, which was run entirely online, for three months last summer, drawing 150 entries from architects around the world.
"We were incredibly surprised," she said. "First, we started to hear from students in California, so we knew we'd reached across the country. Then, some people from Italy asked, 'Can we join?' Then, people from Pakistan, Turkey, South Korea- 13 countries in all."
Mr. Stone learned that some of the architects had already thought about using prefabricated containers as housing "modules" before the idea ever popped into his head.
In 2004, for instance, the New Jersey architect Adam Kalkin created his own "Quick House" design using five shipping containers as a base, the next year, a European context, "living Box," was held on similar them.
But "Live the Box," posed a new and more extensive challenge: creation of an urban multifamily mixed-use project, using the containers as building blocks.
Architects were encouraged to study the Neighborhoods around the Newark site, and to reflect planners' desire for open walkways and green space.
"People really put their hearts into it," said Ms. De Freitas, who supervised a jury kept "blind" to the identities of entrants.
In December, when the awards ceremony was held, the winners were Felix Heidgen and Thomas Nagy, architects working for RMJM in Princeton, N.J. The shared a $10,000 prize for their design of "NewPark Sation," a complex nine buildings connected by bridges and walkways.
The Stacked containers in their entry are elevated on pillars so that the ground level becomes "a stage for social and commercial interaction for the residents and the city at large," said Mr. Heidgen, who explained that he had once worked in Newark and sees it as a multifaceted community. Mr. Nagy, who was born in Japan and researched Newark before embarking on the container project, said he envisioned the open plaza as an urban park.
The individuals units in their entry vary widely in size (one container makes a small studio: four of them are used to create a 1,200 square food apartment), but large and small units are scattered throughout the complex.
Circulation would be improved with a system of air pockets between units, the architects said. They did not formulate a solution to "building block degradation," or rust. "you could leave the containers as they are," Mr. Heidgen said, "and live with the patina; that could be quite interesting. Or paint."
Both the second and third place winners – Modulaire of Miami, and Tang & Wang Architects of Savannah, Ga. – resented strikingly bold designs.
The Tang & Yang entry wowed jurors: Mr. Stone ever described it as "sexy". But, Ms. De Freitas said they found it less "buildable" than other winners.
"Having a relationship to reality got design points," she said. "The idea is that they could really happen someday."
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