Innovations in shaping the residential and retail buildings. Functional and pro-environmental potential of shipping containers in architecture

Abstract

Shipping containers are currently one of the innovative trends of shaping architectural objects. They are used to build portable and permanently set in the ground residential and public buildings. Realization with the use of shipping containers appear all over the world, i.a. single- and multifamily houses in the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark and France, the bus station in the Netherlands, the art gallery in Tokyo. Particularly, many realization with the use of shipping containers relate to housing environment due to ease of transport, speed of installation and assembly, shorten the construction time and pro-environmental potential. In contrary, conventional housing is responsible for ¼ forest logging area, absorbs 1/6 of fresh water resources and consumes 2/5 of liquid fuels and materials. The respect for the environment in the aspect of the global direction of shaping residential and retail buildings is particularly important. This paper focuses on pro-environmental, usably and economical aspects of architectural objects with the use of shipping containers on the example of Polish and world-wide realization.