Can You Believe What They Did With Shipping Containers?

The shipping container: an incredible tool to revitalize neighborhoods and urban centers.

In 1956, Malcom McLean ushered in a new era of international trade by inventing the intermodal shipping container. McLean would also unknowingly help revolutionize the field of real estate development by giving a unique blank canvas that would inspire Phillip Clark to convert these cheap and strong steel boxes into a habital building structure. Clark would be granted a patent for a series of early shipping container conversion diagrams on August 8, 1989.

Shipping containers have since been used to quickly and inexpensively convert unused land to higher and better uses. Here we examine the kinds of unique structures that can be adapted from shipping containers.

TURN A PASSIVE PARK INTO AN ACTIVE DESTINATION

The Terroir on the Porch is a seasonal wine bar and tapas restaurant made from a shipping container situated in New York City’s High Line Park. Open may through November, Terroir on the Porch offers alfresco dining and is the only restaurant located in the expansive 1.45 mile park.

Photo Credit: M Field

TURN A FORGOTTEN ALLEYWAY INTO A DESTINATION

Urban landscapes are filled with empty patches of land between two buildings, creating dead spaces in otherwise vibrant, walkable environments. Oftentimes, these oddly shaped plot’s small dimensions make the land financially prohibitive for vertical construction. Shipping containers offer an inexpensive option for putting this land into good use.

In San Francisco’s Mission District, architect Malcolm Davis renovated a 19th-century carriage house into a small business incubation space complete with offices, a commercial kitchen and a ground-floor café space. Davis also acquired a small adjoining lot as part of his property purchase and quickly turned this space into a welcoming third place, doubling as both an outdoor seating area for Stable Café and adding a shipping container that houses a retail location for Baylor Chapman’s Lila B Design studios. Lila B Design specializes in creating living arrangements made from succulents and the courtyard acts as a living garden where Chapman grows plants for her business. The result is a unique and welcoming urban environment on a street otherwise devoid of retail life.

Photo Credit: www.lilabdesign.com

Photo Credit: www.lilabdesign.com

In St Petersburg, Florida, the owners of The Avenue restaurant converted in an unused back patio area into an inviting outdoor bar and live music stage using two 20-foot shipping containers. Not only has this space become a destination for a growing class of young professionals in this once-sleepy town, but the new space has made a positive contribution to the proprietor’s bottom lines by effectively doubling the size of the restaurant’s seating capacity for a fraction of the price.

Photo Credit: M Field

START A FARMERS MARKET

The Ohio City Farm in Cleveland, Ohio’s west side is one of the largest urban farms in the country. A partnership between Ohio City Incorporated and the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, this six acre farm overlooking the Cleveland skyline exists to serve the city’s food-scarce residents with fresh, local and healthy produce. The on-site farm stand constructed from shipping containers sells produced from Ohio City Farmers and is open June through November.

Photo Credit: Erika Meschkat

Photo Credit: Ohiocityfarm.wordpress.com

The Findlay Market Farmstands is a program of Cincinnati’s Findlay Market serving the Walnut Hills and Price Hills neighborhoods. These shipping container storefronts are an innovative way to sell fresh fruits, vegetables and prepared foods from the farmers and food artisans of Findlay Farmers Market in underserved areas of Cincinnati.

Photo Credit: Jocelyn Gibson www.urbancincy.com

START A FARM

In urban environments where open land is scarce, some companies are developing ways to convert shipping containers into farms. One such company is PodPonics in Atlanta, Georgia who have perfected what it calls ‘next-generation urban agriculture’, using their technology to create hydroponic container farms. Produce from PodPonics farms are sold across the Southeast at farmers markets as well as grocery store such as Kroger, Earth Fare, Whole Foods and The Fresh Market.

Photo Credit: www.podponics.com

Photo Credit: www.podponics.com

START A GROCERY STORE

Opened in 2011, Stockbox created a prototype 160 foot grocery store in Seattle, Washington using a converted shipping container as an experiment to “fix the grocery gap in a neighborhood near you.” The concept allows for the construction of mini-grocery stores that can be easily opened in neighborhoods that lack access to grocery items and fresh produce.

Photo Credit: www.stockboxgrocers.com

Photo Credit: www.stockboxgrocers.com

Photo Credit: www.stockboxgrocers.com

OPEN A COFFEE SHOP

Copa Vida worked with the development team at the GoPro headquarters in Carlsbad, California to incorporate a shipping container coffee shop to serve the 900+ workers in the complex.

Photo Credit: www.copa-vida.com

Starbucks Coffee opened a modern modular drive thru concept using shipping containers outside Seattle, Washington in 2011. Based on the success of this model, the company is now scaling up prefab models that will be assembled on sites that were previously viewed as too small to sustain the more traditional store layouts. These shipping container storefronts have since opened in Salt Lake City (pictured), Denver, Chicago, Portland and Virginia Beach.

Photo Credit: www.starbucks.com

TRANSFORM AN ENTIRE CITY BLOCK

The Yard is a pop up shipping container village located on a waterfront lot adjacent to San Francisco’s AT&T Park. Created by China Basin Ballpark Co, the real estate arm of the San Francisco Giants, this temporary use of space is designed to be a harbinger for future development. Eventually, China Basin intends to build a mixed-use development project and public park on the site. The Yard combines restaurants, a food truck park, a bar and retail pop up shops constructed from shipping containers with a series of programmed community events. As it stands, the plan is to keep The Yard operational through 2017 until the development team can begin vertical construction on the underlying lot.

Photo Credit: M Field

Photo Credit: M Field

Photo Credit: M Field

What started out as an urban intervention master’s thesis for architectural students Philip Auchettl, David Lowenstein and Jason Grauten, quickly morphed into a unique urban piazza in downtown San Diego and financed by a massive crowdsourcing campaign with contributions from more than 200 San Diegans. Encompassing an entire city block, the Quartyard activtes a 25,000 square foot vacant lot using shipping containers to construct a unique third place featuring a music stage, coffee shop, beer garden, restaurant and dog park. The partners signed a two year lease for the space that extends through late 2017, at which time a decision will be made to explore whether permanent construction will begin on the site. Due to the flexibility offered with shipping container structures, if the current lot does get developed it is entirely possible that the Quartyard could simply be moved to temporarily activate another underutilized site in downtown San Diego.

Photo Credit: www.quartyardsd.com

Photo Credit: www.quartyardsd.com

Photo Credit: www.quartyardsd.com

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Photo Credit: www.quartyardsd.com

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Photo Credit: www.quartyardsd.com

OPEN A DOG PARK

The PetSmart P.U.P. pop up dog park has activated empty spaces with the happy sounds of man’s best friends by bringing its portable dog park using a shipping container and fencing to both Detroit (pictured) and Phoenix. These units offer an inexpensive alternative to traditional dog park construction, costing around $50,000 each.

Photo Credit: www.onthegrid.city

Photo Credit: www.onthegrid.city

BUILD A PARKING GARAGE… FOR BICYCLES

The Century Building in Pittsburgh is a mixed-use project combining residential lofts, commercial and retail spaces into a unique, historical building. To make the project even more attractive to it’s target audience of young, working professionals the development team constructed a secured bike parking facilities out of a shipping container. The facility, known as the Bicycle Commuter Center, also sells yearly spaces for cycling commuters downtown. In addition to secured parking inside the containers, the facility also includes various exterior bike racks offering free, short term bike parking to customers of the booming cultural district in downtown PGH.

Photo Credit: www.kearch.com

Photo Credit: www.centuryon7th.com

MAKE LIFE COMFORTABLE FOR PEDESTRIANS BY OPENING A PUBLIC RESTROOM

Caltech and Kohler teamed up to produce a safe, cheap and hygienic public toilet that could be deployed in urban environments throughout the world. The project received financial backing from the Gates Foundation’s Reinvent the Toilet Challenge in 2012, and deployed units to India starting in late 2013. The toilet is completely self-contained, does not require a connection to the sewer and can treat its own wastewater in under six hours. For urban environments that lack public restrooms, the shipping container may prove to be an inexpensive and efficient way to make the public realm more useful.

Photo Credit: www.kohler.com

Photo Credit: www.kohler.com

Photo Credit: www.kohler.com

Compiled by Mike Field