Exciting news was released this week in the city of Detroit. A new boutique hotel will be built out of shipping containers. The project is called “Collision Works” and the breaking ground ceremony is planned for 2013. Plans for the hotel’s construction are part of a larger rejuvenation of Detroit as the economy gradually stabilizes in the United States. The innovative hotel is a symbol of regrowth in the city.
Massachusetts is seeing an increase in popularity of durable portable storage container homes. Last year the state of Massachusetts approved about 400 one- and two- family modular homes to be built. This year the state has already approved 297 steel homes to be built, which amounts to a 3 to 5 % growth so far for this year.
On August 4th, help came to the people of Pader, Uganda, in the form of a steel shipping container. High school students, 150 total, from Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School in New Jersey, worked the entire academic year to transform a recycled high cube box into a medical clinic. New Jersey has a large port where thousands of steel boxes travel in and out of every day. One of these retired units can make a big difference.
A specialized military group has been deployed in Afghanistan with an unusual mission: to locate lost and forgotten standard steel shipping units. This group, the Mobile Container Assessment Team, or MCAT, is composed of dozens of United States soldiers spread throughout Afghanistan.
A prominent shipping service has shut down again in Portland, Maine. American Feeder Lines, the company in transition, is a shipping company based in New York, and it links Portland, Boston and Halifax, and Nova Scotia. The services of transporting shipping units from this port have stopped and started multiple times before due to lack of business. A surplus of vessels and empty containers and a lack of goods to transport results in lost profits for shipping companies.
It’s becoming a frequent theme on this blog that more and more people are looking to containers as serious building solutions. We’ve seen them hit all continents around the globe and this article is about how they have made their way to the luxurious region of the Hamptons, in New York.
One of the biggest trends in architecture these days is portable storage container housing. Buildings are extra sought after if the materials used for construction are shipping units, retired from their days of cross- oceanic voyages. The portable unit construction is often seen in private homes, office buildings, and restaurants and shops.
This summer there will be an exciting new even happening in Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York. A photography collective in DUMBO is using recycled shipping containers to create a photography exhibit.
The summer art show, dubbed Photoville, will be running June 22nd to July 1sth. United Photo Industries is organizing the event. United Photo Industries Creative Director Sam Barzilay described the event as “sort of a photographic village or country fair for photography.”
Storage Container Homes in American and England continue to be built with a bias towards sustainability, spatial efficiency, and contemporary aesthetic architecture.
A wooden paneled refurbished container home is perched off the grid in Nederlands, Colorado.
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Field trips are special treats for children of elementary school age, but they aren’t always possible due to lack of school funding or supervision. When children do get a chance to go on a field trip, the experience is often one that leaves a big impression on them.