This Solar-Powered House Produces 50% More Energy Than It Consumes!

A French architect Philippe Starck has developed a prefabricated wooden house that takes advantage of solar power and other sustainable power sources to produce energy.

The house is under construction and will be placed outside Paris for Starck’s personal use. It is produced together with one of Europe’s leading prefab manufacturers Riko. This house is also called a PATH house (Prefabricated Accessible Technological Homes) that is designed to consume a third of the energy of a traditional house.

The house has glazed with with rows of aluminum panels running in between. The energy-producing system is placed under the fluted parapet that lines the edge of the roof.

The PATH homes can have at maximum eight rooms in an area between 140 and 350 square meters. The house is priced around 2,500 and 4,500 euros per square meter. The delivery takes approximately 6 months. Assembling is usually done in 2 weeks.

Shanghai Metal Corporation is also a provider of customized prefabricated houses that are environmentally friendly and can be build with low costs. They can be empowered with our solar power system. Check our website for more details. Follow us also in our social media platforms for future updates.

    

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

via Dezeen

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Container Island Resorts – America’s New Dubai

Did you know that there are over 4000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico that will be decommissioned within the next century. These oil rigs occupy approximately 80 million square feet of area in the ocean. Basically the only way to remove them is to blow them into oblivion which would cost millions of dollars and destroy a major part of the Gulf’s aquatic life. What if these oil rigs could be used in another way?

The idea of turning the oil rigs into luxurious hotel resorts was already presented in 2009 by Morris Architects who also won the top prize in a hospitality design design contest with this concept. This idea also introduces an application for shipping containers.

The idea is to prefabricate hotel pods off-site out of shipping containers and transport them into the oil rigs with cargo ships. These new island resorts are also been referred as America’s Dubai. The BLDGBLOG site has put it also to a poetic perspective by comparing the resorts as the  Kalevala of Abandoned Oil Rigs.

Prefabricating and transporting the hotels onto the rigs a relatively simple procedure. The challenges are more related to maintenance and business side. How to ensure security on the resort, how to handle stormy weather conditions, how to price them and how to maintain a steady flow of customers?

Shanghai Metal Corporation is a professional provider of prefabricated container hotels. You may see our website for detailed descriptions of our hotels. If you have any questions, please contact us with this form. Check also our social media sites for future updates.

    

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: BLDGBLOG, LA Curbed, Dornob, Morris Architects, Design Ideas, The Telegraph,  Paul Baut, Tree Hugger, Bustler

See our other articles about shipping container hotels.

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Prefab Construction Enables Skateboarding on Water!

The great thing about prefab architecture is that it can be built somewhere and placed elsewhere. Actually prefabricated construction can be placed anywhere, say, in space, underwater or on water. One cool instance of floating prefab is a skate ramp on Lake Tahoe.

This 7,000 lb was built in four days to promote Visit California’s Dream365 campaign. Over 300 man hours were needed to get the ramp on water. After finishing the project, the ramp was first tested by pro skateboarder Bob Burnquist.

The floating structure consists of an 8 ft (2.4 m) tall wooden bank ramp and a smaller 5 ft (1.5 m) secondary ramp. Both wooden ramps rest on top of a 36 ft (11 m) long floating platform, with the ramps stained with different colors for a creative effect and polished to optimize skating speed.

Floating skate ramps have also been built elsewhere. For example Finnish snowboarders Eero Aattala and Roope Tonteri realised the idea by installing a skate ramp on a lake in Finland. The ramp was also used for swimming and enjoying the Finnish Mid-Summer Festival.

Skateboarding and prefabricated construction seem to be a good match. This is also shown by a nonprofit company Skateistan that installed prefabricated shipping container skate parks in Afghanistan to enhance local physical education. You can read more about it from here.

We in Shanghai Metal Corporation have a wide experience in executing high-quality prefabricated building projects. If you are designing your own, please ask for our consultation by sending an inquiry. Please look at our website too see our former projects. Also follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Visit California, Jerry Blohm, Bob Burnquist, Gizmodo, Red Bull