Haiti Earthquake: Converting Shipping Containers Into Emergency Housing

The idea isn’t new. In fact, it’s common to see shipping containers used as housing from farms outside of Miami, to whole communities overseas. And why not? The standard 40′ long shipping container is roughly 8′ wide (320 square feet), with roughly an 8′ “ceiling.”

Average price? About $1,500. $3,000 for a fully insulated, refrigerated container (obviously without refrigeration).

I recently spent a weekend on a farm in the Redlands outside Miami, and slept in a container – with a futon, bath, shower, kitchen, dining area, and sliding glass doors to a deck outside.

Some Clemson University researchers have been experimenting with ways to convert shipping containers into emergency housing in the hurricane-prone Caribbean, where a surplus of the sturdy boxes often sits in port yards.

Pernille Christensen, a research associate in the Richard H. Pennell Center for Real Estate and Ph.D. student in planning, design and the built environment; associate professor Doug Hecker; and assistant professor Martha Skinner of Clemson’s School of Architecture, collaborated on the SEED Project, working to develop a method to convert the shipping containers into homes.

“Because of the shipping container’s ‘unibody’ construction they are also very good in seismic zones and exceed structural code in the United States and any country in the world,” Hecker said. “They have also been used in other countries as emergency shelters in the case of earthquakes. As the SEED Project develops this will certainly be an area that we incorporate. With a few simple cuts at the port, a storage container can be turned into something that is livable and opens to the site.”

A prototype emergency container home is under way on the Clemson campus, and the project has been awarded an Environmental Protection Agency P3 (People, Prosperity and the Planet) grant to make the container part of the 2010 National Sustainable Design Expo on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in April. The research team plans to build a prototype in the Caribbean in the next year.

The research was partially funded by Container-It of Atlanta, Sargent Metals of Anderson and the Intermodal Steel Building Units Association. Clemson also is collaborating with Tri County Technical College’s department of welding.

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