Architectural practices around the world have leapt into shipping container design as a modern, fashionable and apparently sustainable way of building a range of things we use in our lives. Where the US architecture firm Architectural Blue differs is that they are building a 1.3 acre site that physically showcases some of the ways that…
No matter what politicians say about the world we live in, there is an undisputable crisis we face in the world today – climate change is happening and that is coming in a large part from manmade CO2 emissions. Unless we act fast, and the Donald Trumps of this world stop putting profit before their…
The world’s first zero emissions, fully autonomous container ship is to be launched next year in 2018. The plan is for these vessels to be cheaper to run and with zero emissions to save on diesel emissions from 40,000 heavy truck journeys every year. Will it actually be safer than container ships that ply the…
Shipping containers are a classic and proven method of moving all sorts of goods around the world. The numbers involved in the shipping container trade are huge – the European Union estimates that 3.8 billion tonnes of goods are loaded and unloaded every year in shipping containers in that part of the world. Due to…
A dance festival in London is using a folding shipping container in an act called ‘Origami’. Shipping containers have made a bit of an impact on the world’s aesthetics. Their appearance has come to represent industry and trade which, at one level, should be hidden away unseen but have, in fact, come to be celebrated….
Iceland has the peculiar honour of having more American tourists visit the country every year than its entire national population. The idea then that the US Maine Brewer’s Guild should send a shipping container with 78 types of beer to a beer festival in Iceland this summer isn’t as silly as you might think… Wait…
Could a shipping container ‘tiny house’ be a solution for someone seeking a place of their own in Australia? Over this longer article we will look at the tiny house movement in the country, and examine the ins and outs of moving into a small shipping container home. House prices – ouch! Australia’s cities are…
Militaries the world over love to construct buildings that are cheap, sturdy, and can be thrown up in minimal time. It is of little surprise, therefore, that they have recently discovered the benefits of repurposing shipping containers for their buildings. Shipping containers are very durable, can take a lot of weight and, thanks to being…
A shipping container that celebrates the world around it? Shipping containers can be quite jarring to look at. Built for the purpose of shipping goods around the world and lasting through freezing and violent ocean storms, let’s face it they weren’t built to be beautiful. Yet their functionality and industrial appearance has enabled people to…
Apart from ships getting larger and the introduction of automation, the shipping container liner industry has changed little since the concept first emerged in the 1950’s. But could digitisation of the global economy change this forever? How liners operate today Shipping container lines operate a number of ships that do set routes. One may leave…