Will Extra Containers
Earn a Second Life?
by Alex Frangos
From The Wall Street Journal Online
November 14, 2003
Nov. 14, 2003 -- One architecture firm thinks it knows what to do with the tens of thousands of surplus shipping containers lying in U.S. ports: Turn them into apartment blocks.
Fox & Fowle, a New York-based architecture firm, has a plan to modify and stack hundreds of unused container vessels into 351 housing units -- along with adjacent commercial and retail space -- in Gloucester, Mass. The plan sprang out of an "ideas competition" sponsored by the Boston Society of Architects to come up with clever ways of designing dense urban spaces.
Fox & Fowle figured it could solve two problems with its proposal: Do something with the containers littering U.S. ports, and create a vibrant urban space. "We wanted to turn lemons into lemonade and make something valuable from something being discarded," says firm principal Mark E. Strauss.
The container glut is a result of years of trade deficits. For shippers in Asia, where many imports derive, it's cheaper to get new containers locally than it is to return empty ones from the U.S. So, hills of the rectangular, steel vessels sit empty in port lots around the country.
Most of the proposed units would be duplexes that combine two or more 40-foot-long containers capped at one end with floor-to-ceiling windows. The container community would be situated near a railroad station in Gloucester, a seaside community about an hour north of Boston. The designers hoped the former cargo-holders would appeal to the town's affinity for things maritime.
But for now, the plan is just that: a plan. Mr. Strauss is optimistic, however. "A couple of developers are very interested" in the concept, he says.
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