Cocoa Research Station for Chocolate Manufacturing Company, Costa Rica

Video

Construction

About Containerwerk

Project	Research Station Costa Rica
Architect and Builder	Containerwerk
Client	Rausch Schokoladen GmbH
Containers	4
Installation Time	4 days
Year	2019
Location	Costa Rica

This beautiful cocoa research station in Costa Rica is made out of four 40-foot shipping containers, which were mechanically foamed and upgraded in Germany and insulated according to EnEV standards.

Two containers form the basis. Two further containers are placed crosswise to each other. The upper two containers contain sleeping and living units for up to eight people. Large glass elements are inserted at the ends of the containers, with a view over the rainforest and the cocoa plants. The entire upper floor is surrounded by a terrace made of regional wood.

On the ground floor, half of a shipping container is equipped as a bathroom and changing area for the workers on site. The other half contains the fully equipped laboratory where Rausch can conduct research. The second container on the ground floor becomes the lounge with a kitchen area and large dining table and a couch area. A meeting place for everyone. The two containers are about six meters apart. In this space a garage will be installed.

The cocoa estate lies in the middle of the jungle and within a biotope network. Since the Rausch GmbH in Costa Rica basically pursues an ecological concept, the construction of the estate from used shipping containers is an obvious option. Due to the high degree of prefabrication of the containers in Germany, there are hardly any construction emissions on site, such as noise, dust or aisles for construction site logistics. The impact on the original nature of the region is kept to a minimum and the building can be dismantled at any time without leaving any residue. In addition, the solution is completely self-sufficient. This means that the buildings do not have to be connected to any infrastructure. Electricity is produced by a solar system and the building network has a septic tank. In a second stage, a water treatment plant will be installed. This means that research can be carried out completely independently and in the middle of the rainforest.

Escape Den - Shipping Container Home with Decks on I-Beam Steel Frame

Escape Den shipping container home contains the kitchen and dinning area on the ground floor, while the living room and bedrooms are situated on the two upper levels. Three spaces are connected via a set of stairs which also connects the home’s various decks and terraces supported by I-beam steel frame.

Construction Process

Floor Plans / Drawings

Video

About River & Rain

Project	Escape Den
Architecture	River & Rain
Containers	4
Area	134 sqm
Bedrooms	2
Bathrooms	2
Architects In Charge	Kazi Fida Islam, Md. Abdul Awyal, Sumaiya Shameem, Mousumi Kabir, Irtefa Iradat, Abid Khan
Client	Tanjim Haque, Asma Sultana
Structural Consultant	Ruhul Alam
Electrical Consultant	Eng. Asad
Photography	Maruf Raihan, Hasan Saifuddin Chandan, Snahasis Saha
Location	Dhaka, Bangladesh
Year	2017

Description by architects

Concept

Concept of space evoked on three main grounds; to create a hymn of solitary through a more contemporary yet quirky design approach with a time worthy construction period. The space was considered as the simplest of its expression. Neither form dominated nor space, a perfect mingling and cohesion to generate ooze sophistication. To create a subtle experience of one’s being and non-being at the same moment, the project adorns emptiness with grace. Space here is not stagnant; it’s allowed to flow with its highest ardencies, form is only the resonance of space.

Architecture

The location is mostly secluded of settlements at present and therefore remains little less noise. The serene place is a perfect hide out from every day hustle-bustle of busy urban life.

The I-beam steel frame skeleton is finely embellished with four pieces of shipping containers. The longest one is adjoined with two, forming the bedrooms. The rustic romanticism those containers evokes, are taken delightfully by the architect to recreate a place that just impeccably out of the world, surreal.

Triple height atrium with green foliage of almond tree is indeed a solemn beauty for anyone who steps inside. The soft screening of vines in the top will soon be a veil of green velvet. The embedded greenery on container top and I-beam steel frame acts as buffers to lessen the heat penetration.

Project technology

Extruded steel structure embraced the container gracefully. The whole frame was erected part by part as an independent system where those metal boxes were befitted in between the infrastructure. For ultimate makeovers of containers and to make them livable, necessary cut, holes and adjoining for facade treatment have been done after the accurate placement in desired level to avoid the fragility.

The hefty look of those containers has become dramatically airier with some skillful ensemble of architectural details. The floated platforms of the house, intertwining stairs and diverse direction of container placement have made the project more visually eye-catching.

Materials

The off track material was shipping container itself. The significance also lied beneath for its consideration of reuse, thus initiating a sustainable approach in design. Major inventory of materials are of reused version.

Constraints and solutions achieved

Apart from the structural execution, the complex procedure of the spatial transformation of shipping container into a cozy home stay was a substantial design constrain. The non-enchanting and austere look of hard core shipping containers had to transform into a ideal, cozy built form. The interior has slits and cut through to add volume to the space. The scale of individual container has been maneuvered considering both internal and external space dialogues with it. Exposed steel structures framed the invisible walls thus creating with a harmony of visible containers.

Details of landscaping

Clearly the landscaping has been kept bare minimum to enjoy the enchantment of the house. The open vast front yard is clung to adorn the structure; hence, created the perfect soliloquy for this outskirt den.

Educan Dog Training Centre - Shipping Container School for Dogs, Humans and Other Species, Spain

Educan Dog Training Centre is, among other things, also an experiment that shows that agricultural architecture, usually considered minor by the discipline itself, can also be place of architectural exploration and innovation.

Floor Plans / Drawings

Location and Contact Info

About Eeestudio

About Lys Villalba

Project	Educan Dog Training Centre
Architecture	Eeestudio, Lys Villalba
Containers	6
Area	300 sqm
Architects In Charge	Enrique Espinosa, Lys Villalba
Client	Training Educan
Metallic Constructions	Miguel Torrejon
Technical Architect	Javier Renones Marin
Facilities Engineering	Alberto Espinosa
Technical Consultant	Jorge Lopez Hidalgo
Collaborators	Maria Paola Marciano, Irene Dominguez
Construction company	Alji Integral Services
Structural Engineering	Mechanism
Location	Brunete, Spain
Year	2020

Description by architects

01. A multi-species architecture. Eva, Carlos, the Malinois dogs Bicho and Bomba, the Harris owl, five families of swifts, six of kestrels and twenty sparrows, are companion species. All of them live and learn together in this shipping container building 30 kilometers west of Madrid. Located between farm fields, in a rural environment that has been altered in recent decades by urbanization and intensive agriculture with pesticides, the Educan school is testing how to recover the environmental conditions of this ecosystem.

Its architecture is a multispecies design. While pairs of dogs and humans practice training in the two main classrooms, the birds nest in the nest-facades on the upper floor, with the ideal views and orientations for them. The small birds of prey feed on rodents, keeping their balance with crops and other plants; Smaller birds and field bats, which also inhabit the letters on the south facade, feed on insects, including mosquitoes that carry some canine diseases, and are part of the pollination cycles of flowers and plants in the adjoining fields. Sparrows have joined this self-regulating ecosystem in an unplanned way, nesting in the circular holes on the edges of the shipping containers.

Non-humans are the center of the design. The floors, usually designed for people with shoes, adapt to the pads and joints of canine paws — the training rooms are covered with artificial grass with an elastomeric base, approved for dog training, in removable rolls; the theory lecture classrooms are covered with exposed arid concrete made of semi-polished river boulders. The average height of eyes drops from 160 to 50 cm. The interior openings are raised to heights greater than one meter to avoid dog distractions; the louvered shutters shade the south facade, leaving enough space under them for dogs to pass through to the outside, where the rainwater that falls on the roof is collected in large drinking bowls for dogs and birds. The word becomes bark, and the interior surfaces are lined with sound-insulating pyramids with high acoustic absorption to minimize echo, noise and reverberation.

02. Material crossovers and construction innovation. Diverse materials are used in this building, combining different construction techniques, trades and production systems: from material ecology and waste reduction in the reuse of shipping containers, to the adaptability and thermal inertia of concrete, smooth and undulating formwork made of shipping container wall sheets; from standardization and optimization of industrial sheet metal panels to precision of CNC cut laminated wood joints; from the standardization of basic modules such as 40'HC shipping containers to the hand-crafted ironwork work that allows to customize details, assemblies or new elements such as bench legs, lamps or large sliders that open and close spaces; from automated air conditioning systems, to manual bioclimatic control elements such as perforated shutters or roller blinds; from the material weight of the foundation and concrete wall to the lightness of the rest of the prefabricated and pre-assembled elements.

Lots.Sathon - Cozy Shipping Container Coffee Shop, Bar, Cafe and Restaurant, Bangkok, Thailand

Hidden cozy green space and coffee in the heart of Bangkok’s financial district.

Location and contact info

People like the cozy atmosphere of this shipping container coffee shop. There are seats by the window if you want to receive a lot of natural light. Visitors come solo, come in pairs, come in groups. There are many types of tables to accommodate. Including the outdoor seating area. On days when the sunlight is not very strong, it's nice to sit. Or you can sit inside in the air-conditioned shipping container space.

Municipal Public Library Made of Used Shipping Containers, Colombia

Floor Plan

About EContainers

Architecture	EContainers
Architects in Charge	Ivan Patarroyo, Jeronimo Arias
Area	116 sq m (1250 sq ft)
Containers	Five: Three 20 ft + Two 40 ft
Photography	Andres Osorio
Location	Santa Helena, Mesetas, Meta, Colombia
Year	2018

Description by architects

EContainers develops innovative spaces in design and comfort based on sustainable and renewable architecture that adapt to all types of industry, thus minimizing global environmental impacts since it gives maritime containers a second architectural life when they reach borders of their transport life. This company develops an architecture with containers that is a green and respectful architecture with the environment since it meets the bases of sustainability "3R: Recycle, Reuse and Reduce".

For this project, they developed a municipal public library requested by the Colombian Ministry of Culture to deliver to the Santa Helena village in the municipality of Mesetas, Meta. This project consists of 5 containers, 3 of 20 feet and 2 of 40 feet, which were restored and adapted for the needs of the municipality in cultural matters.

The shipping container public library has solar panels for its operation and was equipped with approximately 1,400 books, supplied by the National Libraries, with the aim of facilitating the circulation and access to information towards greater knowledge and strengthening the reading and writing processes.

The construction of municipal public libraries, apart from promoting the use of new construction systems that are easy to transport, easy to assemble, economic in their sustainability and rapid in their execution, also contributes to encouraging reading in the population and to more people, especially children and young people, become more interested in cultural and historical issues.

According to Andres Valencia, CEO of EContainers, “Cargotecture or construction with containers responds to the concept of sustainable and renewable architecture that adapts to all types of industry. Replacing traditional construction with modular construction allows us to reduce global environmental impacts and contribute to building a better future”.

The focus of this company is to reach areas of difficult access given the complexity of their geographical conditions, it becomes a challenge and a driving force to continue reaching these, where others do not dare to try. In this way, EContainres is committed to sustainable and innovative solutions, adapting to new dynamics, seeking to protect the planet, setting an example of sustainability with the highest quality and construction standards and adapting them to every need. In addition, it invites other companies to become aware of the environment and contribute to the planet, having environmental sustainability and circular economy as a pillar.

Weekend Retreat Three 20ft Shipping Containers 50 sqm House on Steel Stilts and Concrete Pile Foundations for Anchoring House to Hillside, Victoria, Australia

Floor plans / drawings

About studio edwards

Project	House 28
Architecture	studio edwards
Area	50 sq m (540 sq ft)
Containers	Three 20 ft
Bedrooms	2
Bathrooms	1
Photography	Tony Gorsevski
Location	Surf Coast, Wye River, Victoria, Australia
Year	2018

Description by architects

A shipping container house on the Surf Coast in Wye River, Victoria, Australia. Designed as a weekend retreat and made from three 20ft shipping containers. Two connect to form the living space with toilet, laundry and entry. The third acts as a sleeping wing with two bedrooms, toilet and shower. Connected by a external deck on steel stilts which sit on deep concrete pile foundations - anchoring the house to the hillside.

Internally the spaces are lined with marine plywood. Externally they are insulated and clad with galvanised steel sheeting. The northern face of the shipping container house has fixings to allow for planting wires to connect to the ground, encouraging native plants to grow over the house.

The Southern facade is predominately glazed with a series of double glazed doors and windows opening onto the decking which looks southwards through the trees towards the ocean. A green roof planted with native dichondra sits above providing additional thermal insulation, blending into the surrounding landscape.