Phomolong – Shanghai Metal Corporation

Our fifth chapter on shipping containers’ architectural applications will discuss examples of how and why they are an excellent choice for creating affordable and sustainable schools and student homes. It might be that even this generation of students will get familiar at least one of them.

Using shipping containers as temporal school houses has at least two rationales. The first reason is that especially old wooden school buildings are likely to have mold issues that may cause severe health risks. For example an article of a Finnish science magazine Tiede states that every second school in Finland has mold issues (source). Students are therefore either forced to stay in their mold school or move to another school. Container schools could be installed in relatively short time and with relatively low costs.

The second reason can be studied from Samsung. In 2012, the South Korean electronics chaebol established a shipping container school in the South African village of Phomolong as a part of its corporate-social responsibility program. The school offers its 21 students premium education facilities with solar powered electricity system and notebooks, an Internet connection and Samsung Galaxy tablets. (source)

The lack of affordable student homes creates another application for shipping containers. For instance in Finland there is a high demand for student homes as the number of available apartments in student villages is getting lower. Students are now forced to pay a very high monthly rent. Some students have to pay even over 800 euros of monthly rent. According to a survey conducted by the Finnish periodical Iltalehti, 40 percent of the thousand respondents said that their funds are really low due to expensive rents. They are now designing economical student homes, made of containers.

Harri Nordling, a Finnish container home designer, has designed beautiful container student homes. The container homes can also be expanded to multi-storeyed blocks of flats. This sort of solution has already been applied in Sweden. Container homes are easy to build. They are also low-cost and environmentally friendly.

So many deficits in housing can nowadays be solved with shipping containers. Therefore we offer a large variety of shipping containers in Shanghai Metal Corporation. We also offer prefabricated container building solutions. Please visit our web pages for detailed descriptions. Check also our social media sites.

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Tiede magazine, Cnet, The Volt Report,Arch Daily, Wintech Modular Buildings, Lion Containers, Design Boom, Iltalehti.fi, Hansacontainers.com

Continue to chapter 6.

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Today shipping containers are used to build apartments, hotels, stores and saunas to name but a few. But why does it make sense to build schools out of containers?

The first reason is that especially old wooden school buildings are likely to have mold issues that may cause severe health risks. For example an article of a Finnish science magazine Tiede states that every second school in Finland has mold issues (source). Students are therefore either forced to stay in their mold school or move to another school. Container schools could be installed in relatively short time and with relatively low costs.

In Orange County California, creative architects had an over three months projects of expanding the Waldorf School in Costa Mesa by using shipping containers. It took 99 days to build four buildings out of 32 shipping containers. The eco-friendly construction project cost two million US dollars which was estimated of being 10-20 percent cheaper than an “old-school” building project. Also it would have most likely taken more time than 99 days to finish by using other material than shipping containers.

There are many types of internationally standardized shipping containers. Some have an open top and some can be opened from the sides. Thereby it gives designers limitless opportunities to develop mobile education facilities. In order to solve mold related problems or take education to less developed areas, governments, nonprofit organizations and companies’ CSR managers should look for containerized education solutions.

Shanghai Metal Corporation is a proud provider of shipping containers. Our wide variety of container products can be seen in our website http://www.smccontainer.com. We hope that you also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. You can also try our new mobile application by scanning the QR code below.

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Tiede magazine, Cnet, The Volt Report, Arch Daily, Wintech Modular Buildings, Lion Containers, Design Boom