Remember your old college dorm? Chances are it wasn't the pinnacle of innovative design. Well things are quite different for a few lucky students in Le Havre, France. Their rooms are modern, light-filled and made from old shipping containers! Called Cité a Docks and designed by Cattani Architects, the minimalistic dwellings each come with a bathroom, a kitchen and, most importantly, bragging rights.
Images © Cattani Architects via Freshome
Since it’s all too common for dormitories to feel jail-like and unwelcoming with their bland, uniform spaces, Cattani made sure they created an open feeling with their design (which can be quite a challenge when you’re working with closed grey boxes as your base element). Instead of just stacking the boxes right on top of one another, they staggered them and left alternating areas between containers empty so that they act as walkways and balconies.
To assure that every room has the same level of privacy, the first floor is raised off the ground, which consequently opens up space for students to store their bikes. Each unit is about 24 square meters and has a large glass wall which lets in a lot of natural light. And while the exterior of the building might be industrial and metallic, the inside of each room is a welcoming white with warm wooden furniture. Since shipping containers can be quite noisy (which is hardly conducive to studying) container walls that face the exterior of the building or sit between other units are insulated using concrete fire walls and rubber.
Via Freshome
Images © Cattini Architects via Freshome
As John wrote “If you are considering modular or prefab home, building with containers is worth taking…”
Unlike traditional building structure or modular housing solution, Container homes are complied in shape of 20 or 40 foot lengths with limited design living space, although the architect uses tailor-made method to accommodate design preference. However, with its strong structurally and on time on budget solution is become the second marketing opportunity of property developer and property owner. –Lifesbox–
If you are considering modular or prefab home, building with containers is worth taking a look at.
Good resource is the Residential Shipping Container Primer website. A SHOWCASE OF SHIPPING CONTAINER HOMES AND BUILDINGDS, AND A DO IT YOURSELF (DIY) REFERENCE FOR CONVERTING RECYCLED INTERMODAL CARGO SHIPPING CONTAINERS INTO BUILDINGS AND ARCHITECTURE.
Lots of great example buildings, details, facts, and links to other articles. They have something new that you can setup your own project wiki to get help with your project if you are considering a design build project.
http://www.ResidentialShippingContainerPrimer.com
[...] we’ve seen other shipping container student housing before, Utrecht’s version is slightly different because the containers themselves seem to [...]
I love the idea of reusing shipping containers as the predominant module for the dormitory\’s architecture, but what about the site design? It looks as if the horizontal ground plane was nothing more than green marker from the original concept sketches. Much more could have been done to integrate the structure into the landscape. While the design focused on reusing a material to benefit the a general sense of ecological responsibility, the finished product doesn\’t engage any of the local, site-specific, ecology.