Why Shipping Container homeless shelters FAIL

How many times have you heard this argument “There are thousands of unused shipping containers lying around the world. You can solve homelessness and housing crises if you convert them into homes.”

Chapters
0:00 Homeless shelters in UK
2:39 Psychological issues
5:15 Modular units advantages
5:57 Le Corbusier
7:23 Pruitt-Igoe
8:12 Hurricane Katrina
9:07 Common thread
10:50 Better approach

Housing organizations in England and Wales have embraced this idea. They assemble prefabricated modular units made of shipping containers to provide emergency, short-term subsidized accommodation to displaced, low-income families and individuals. QED Sustainable Urban Developments, the company behind many of these temporary shipping container housing projects have designed them to be a kit of parts.
Anne Longfield, the Children's Commissioner for England has long spoken about the negative effects living in a shipping container has on children. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) says that shipping containers cannot readily be adapted to provide the spatial or environmental requirements for living. Re-use of containers can result in sub-standard, cramped, unhealthy spaces which overheat in the summer and freeze in the winter.
Modular units obviously have a lot of advantages like ease of construction, lower costs and flexibility. They might be the right path to take when building shelters, but why do they have to be shipping containers? It also is estimated that a recycled steel shipping container can produce enough metal studs to build 14 framed houses of the same size as the original container.

Le Corbusier came up with his ideal city containing prefabricated and identical high-density concrete skyscrapers allowing the city to function as a “living machine”. Unite d’habitation in Marseille, France was his first mass housing project. Pruitt-Igoe housing projects in St. Louis, Missouri. The complex was opened in 1956 and soon became a hub for poverty, crime and racial segregation. All 33 buildings were demolished with explosives in the mid 1970s. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the lower ninth ward in 2005 starchitects like Frank Gehry came in with funky, over-ambitious designs, threw up cheaply made homes and slapped solar panels on them. Soon after, the tenants noticed mold growing inside their homes, rotting wood, sloped floors, leaky roofs, collapsing walls, electrical and plumbing issues.

So, let’s find a common thread among all these social housing projects. In every case, an architect, designer, city planner or engineer has approached the problem with arrogance. They think that they know what the homeless need and they want to impose their theoretical master plans on people. They are designing for an imaginary client not for the everyday civilian.

So, what’s the solution? Well, for starters, we need to get rid of the arrogant and over-ambitious idea that design principles can change the world. We need to approach the problem of homelessness and social housing with more humility. And most importantly, we must remember that inevitable value engineering is going to destroy any atypical social housing project. You’re going to end up with a cheap product that’s a shadow of your original intention. That’s what led to the failure of Unite d’habitation, Pruitt-Igoe, the New Orleans homes, and probably the shipping container homes.
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SOURCES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xydPnMW3zjg - NBC NEWS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_esDJ8byass - SKY NEWS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0VoGP4I1h8 - VERDICT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boLyUE3wbjw - SKY NEWS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMf97Lnxx3Q - AADSTTT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A07NnUu6x0 - SWI swissinfo.ch - English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-cfjqh1sSY - Missouri Historical Society
https://www.buildwithrise.com/stories/container-homes-are-exactly-what-they-sound-like-homes
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/23/they-just-dump-you-here-the-homeless-families-living-in-shipping-containers
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#shipppingcontainer #containerhomes #homelessness #housingcrisis #architecturefails

Видео Why Shipping Container homeless shelters FAIL канала Belinda Carr