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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The Eden Project: Bringing The Ancient Copper Back To Life

Copper is known to be a major metal and an essential element used all around the globe. It is the oldest metal known to man and was first discovered and used about 10,000 years ago, however it was only alloyed in bronze circa 3000 BC, making it the first engineering material known to man. 

The first facts about copper relates to the pyramids of Cheops, located in Egypt. Archeologists have found water pipes partly made from copper. Piping network has been used in Egypt for more than 5000 years. Therefore, copper was believed as the symbol of the eternal life. In the hieroglyph system, the ancient Egyptian people utilized the ankh symbol to represent copper.

Nowadays, copper is not only restricted to piping work, but it has expanded to include heating, cooling and refrigeration, electrical wiring, electronics, power generation and transmission, automotive applications, antimicrobial uses and many more. Moreover, copper can still be considered a symbol of eternal life for the Egyptians; however it can also be considered a sustainable material; when taking in consideration the processes of extraction, production and retail.

Therefore, The Eden Project based in Cornwall, England is one of the most innovative and high profile of the Millennium Projects. It is the largest plant enclosure in the world built in the lightest and most ecological way possible. Eden’s aim was to build the Core (education center) with the highest sustainable specifications, challenging the conventions for sustainable design and construction, with targets above the national benchmarks and using carefully selected materials. The team considered the complex interaction between a range of criteria of sustainable issues, specifically waste neutrality, positive futures, recycled content, certification of materials and local sourcing implications.

The key criteria affecting the choice of roofing material were:

• to make a bold architectural statement to complement Eden’s ground-breaking architecture and landscapes;

• to be durable, strong and relatively lightweight;

• to be malleable enough to cope with the complex structure of the roof;

• to have excellent sustainability credentials, and

• most importantly for a building dedicated to education at Eden, the roof should highlight a progressive message relating to sustainable development issues.

While copper can be relatively expensive for a roof and is in strong competition with other roofing materials, it is robust, even when turned into sheets, malleable, completely waterproof and very long lasting: physical properties that made it ideal for the roof’s complex design. Aesthetically too, copper is the only common metal; other than gold,  that isn’t grey or silver, making it one of the most easily recognized metals, thus aiding engagement with visitors as a first step to relating the sustainability message.

As an international manufacturer and supplier for copper sheet and bronze sheet, Shanghai Metal Corporation produces slitting, edging, and oscillates winding to fit your specific copper requirements. For more information on our copper products please visit our website here. Be sure to join the conversation in our Linkedln group, Facebook and Instagram.

You can also read more articles by our team at SMC:

Who To Blame (Or Thank) For Your Braces

3 Most Creative Statues

How To Do A Better Job Than Jack

Sources: The Eden project

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William P.//SMC Editor