Creative applications of coins

Many people get annoyed when their wallets are full of coins. All those clinking sounds in a pocket while you are walking… But have you ever thought of using these coins for something else than paying for chewing gums or helping homeless people?

Several artists have seen the possibility in spare change we carry around and showed that coins don’t have just financial worth.

New York City’s design firm Sagmeister & Walsh created this masterpiece over the eight-day period, covering are of 3,200 square feet and over 100 volunteers helped them to sort the coins by color tone and place them in space in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was made up of 250,000 Euro one-cent pieces.

The piece above is created from steel, brass and one-cent coins. Stars and stripes were cut to make an accurate although not a colorful rendition of the U.S. flag. It was created by Stacey Lee Webber.

This portrait of Nelson Mandela,  the former South African president, that measures 44 by 31 inches was created  out of 5,340 pennies. The British artist Ed Chapman also created mosaic works of pop-cultural icons including Albert Einstein, John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe.

Johnny Swing’s amazing settee made out of 7,000 nickels and 35, 000 welds.

Coin playing cards created by Ted Stanke.

Amazing penny dress created by Raymond Waters in 2010.

And at the end of our article this cute coin panda. Just a bamboo stick is missing!

Shanghai Metal Corporation offers customer steel, copper, other metals and products. For more information visit our main website or send us inquiry. English speaking staff will guide you further. Download our application by scanning QR code below or follow us on Social Media.

    

Silvia M.//SMC Editor

Read more articles written by this author here.

Credits: sackmagazine.com, accountingschoolguide.com, inspirationgreen.com, googleimages.com

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In Container Homes Winter Is Always Outside

Shipping containers are a superior building material and the mainstream for affordable housing. As a form of prefabricated construction, shipping containers houses can to huge extent be built elsewhere than in their final destination. In order for shipping containers to become livable homes, they need a makeover including a proper insulation.

Shipping containers are usually described as an optimum construction material for areas with relatively high temperatures. The reason is that there are well know techniques on how make shipping container houses naturally ventilated. For instance the shipping container cruise terminal in Seville is designed to resist high temperatures during hot summers.

Shipping containers are also suitable for places where winters are long and cold, and where it snows a lot. Originally shipping containers were designed to resist rough weather in the seas during shipping and therefore shipping containers later became an excellent building material. It seems that shipping container architecture was invented like Coca-Cola – by accident.

There are examples of shipping container winter homes that are suitable for Northern countries such as Northern USA, Canada, Finland and other Nordic countries.  For instance an American real estate agent Jeffrey White is transforming shipping containers into affordable and eco-friendly homes for low-income families in Salt Lake City. Each home is made out of two shipping containers, and the whole projects costs 120,000 dollars including the land they sit on. (source)

In order to build beautiful homes like these, the shipping containers need to be enforced with proper insulation. In Shanghai Metal Corporation we sell both shipping containers and highly moisture resistant glass wool for insulation.  Our prefabricated container homes come with polystyrene foam insulation. If you are building affordable homes we will gladly offer you all the material. Just send us an inquiry and our English speaking staff will contact you. Meanwhile please visit our social media sites for future updates.

    

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: The Fair Verona, Jetson Green, Small Cabin Plans, Tiny House Blog, Inhabitat

Cruise Ships Resting in Container Haven

A new application for shipping containers was invented as the design companies Hombre de Piedra and  buró4 built a cruise terminal out of shipping containers in the port of Seville in 2013. The container terminal is to let the passengers of the city’s river cruises to get on and off the ships.

They only needed 45 days in total to finish the project. Installing 23 shipping containers in a 500 square meter area took only two weeks. Therefore the installation costs were not high just like the terminal’s energy production costs. The terminal is naturally ventilated and it can be easily moved if necessary. The buildings’ bioclimatic solutions also ensure that it does not get hot in the terminal during Seville’s hot summers.

What’s more, the cruise terminal is designed to fit in the surrounding environment giving this piece of cargotecture a natural touch. A dialogue with the urban environment was an important objective for the project and thereby shipping containers were an obvious choice for the building material.

The city of Seville wanted a terminal that was able to handle ships with varying number of passengers sailing on the river Guadalquivir. Thanks to the use of shipping containers, the cruise terminal is also extendable allowing the agile installation of new docking pods.

In prefabricated architecture the present trends is to use shipping containers because they offer various benefits with only limited costs. Container architecture, i.e., cargotecture is a big part of today’s sustainable architecture industry. There will be more homes, hotels ect. that will be built on this super building material. Like the cruise terminal in Seville, other cargotectural innovations will emerge.

 

Shanghai Metal Corporation welcomes businesses all over the world to purchase our internationally standardized shipping containers. Our English speaking staff in Shanghai will guide you and consult you in finding the best products for your needs. Just send us an inquiry and we will get back to you. You can also take a look at our website for further details. Please also check our social media sites Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Inhabitat, Hombre de Piedra, Buro4

 

 

Container Summer Pavilions – Luxury for the Modest

Have you ever dreamed about having a summer cottage of your own? Are you considering to buy one or perhaps to build it yourself? Building a vacation house according to one’s own design sounds fantastic, but you might be worried about the costs or confused about the choice of material. Luckily, there is a solution – shipping containers!

Besides shipping goods, shipping containers are also suitable for building beautiful homes in low cost. Actually, the price of an individual 40 ft or 20ft shipping container starts from US 2000. There are at least two reasons why the price is that low.

 

First, the manufacturing process is standardized according to ISO regulations enabling businesses to put containers into mass production. Second, there is a lot of oversupply of containers. According to some statistics, nearly 10,000 units sink annually in the world’s seas and thousands will be abandoned after their first use (read more about a case).

Building out of recycled shipping containers is as good as using totally new ones, and it is also cheaper. Shipping containers are meant to last for ages and tolerate extreme weather conditions in the oceans.  Therefore besides low-cost, shipping containers are also durable and can be considered as a form of sustainable building. Containers are so durable that they can even be converted into shelters for natural disasters.

What’s more, shipping containers come with unlimited design opportunities. The door solutions of shipping containers come in many forms and open-top containers can be transformed into swimming pools. Thanks to the pillars in their four corners, containers can be piled into a complexes of your desire. There are great examples of homes, hotels and stores that show container’s great architectural design. The container city in Mexico is know also for its visual design.

Inspiration for building an own container summer pavilion can be found in the container summer house competition organized by AC-CA. The pictures of these articles include representatives of the best contestant of the competition.

Besides vision and desire, you also will need the material. We in Shanghai Metal Corporation have a long history of providing standardized shipping containers for our international clients. We also have prefabricated container villa solutions that we ship  worldwide. For more details about our products, please visit our website or send us an inquiry.

    

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Bustler, Bustler, Competitiononline, AC-CA, Wikipedia on Shipping Container Architecture

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