When Does a Shipping Container Become an Office - E2 Move to ContainerVille

Shipping containers as an architectural solution have become more popular recently, representing a cheap and sustainable approach that makes use of decommissioned shipping containers. However there are some real issues to do with the inherent dimensions and structural capacity of standard containers. Structurally they are reliant on the eight corners doing all the work when they are stacked, and the corrugated sides provide lateral stability. The dimensions of standard shipping container is 2.4m square section extruded by 12m in length, most useful spaces tend to be wider than 2.4m and certainly in residential use you would expect none of the main rooms to be less wide than 3.4m. As soon as you compromise the container by cutting openings into the sides, or expecting other parts of the container to perform structurally you run into all sorts of issues of having to add new structure to make it work. All of these constraints therefore severely limits the potential uses.

Office use is one of a few that containers lend themselves really well to, as our client Max Barney have proved with their first phase of ContainerVille. In fact this concept has been so popular that they have proceeded with rolling our phase two, which we have signed up to, and phase three which is for a retail food and entertainment court, dues to be completed imminently.

If you are interested in joining the ContainerVille revolution please give us a call and we will refer you – and we’ll even take you out for lunch!