Lifestyle
Shipping container buildings may be cool — but they're not always green
The clothing company Aether’s retail store in San Francisco, part of the city’s Proxy development, is made out of three shipping containers.
James Florio
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James Florio
The clothing company Aether’s retail store in San Francisco, part of the city’s Proxy development, is made out of three shipping containers.
James Florio
Millions — perhaps tens of millions — of shipping containers are sitting empty at ports all over the world. And they’ve been a treasure trove for architects Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano.
“We found so many — it felt like something so ripe to pick, basically,” said Lignano. He and Tolla were in San Francisco recently for the opening of an art exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery focused on their use of shipping containers as building material and art project.
The Italian “starchitects” got into the shipping container building game in the 1990s, roughly a decade after these types of buildings first started appearing. (Shipping containers were invented in the mid-1950s, but the first reported instance of shipping containers being converted into housing was 1987.)
The Drivelines Studios building in Johannesburg, designed by the architectural firm LOT-EK, is made out of 140 upcycled shipping containers.
Ilan Godfrey
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Ilan Godfrey
The Drivelines Studios building in Johannesburg, designed by the architectural firm LOT-EK, is made out of 140 upcycled shipping containers.
Ilan Godfrey
Lignano and Tolla’s New York-based firm LOT-EK’s projects include an experimental art school in New Orleans for people of color and an affordable housing complex in inner-city Johannesburg, complete with swimming pool.
People like shipping container buildings not only because they look interesting but also because they seem to solve a problem — finding a use for the millions of empty steel shipping containers scattered across the planet. They’re used in projects like Photoville in New York City, which transforms the containers into mini art galleries, and Monarch Village, a development for formerly unhoused people in Lawrence, Kansas.
Shipping containers are used in the Monarch Village temporary housing development in Lawrence, Kansas.
Dan Rockhill
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Dan Rockhill
Shipping containers are used in the Monarch Village temporary housing development in Lawrence, Kansas.
Dan Rockhill
“Shipping containers are great for building with because they are modular, movable and durable,” said California architect Douglas Burnham. His firm, Envelope, created Proxy, a development in San Francisco that includes several businesses housed in shipping containers, from a clothing store to a beer garden.
Containers are also an attractive alternative to traditional construction materials such as cement — cement manufacturing produces the world’s third-highest level of planet-warming pollution — and wood, which requires cutting down trees and growing them again.
Italian architect Tolla said she and Lignano favor containers that are 10 to 15 years old, both for sustainability reasons and because they like the containers’ hip, dilapidated look.
“Beauty can be found in things that might look ugly,” Tolla said.
Most people don’t want old containers
A cargo ship heads into port on Oct. 13, 2021, in Bayonne, N.J.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images
A cargo ship heads into port on Oct. 13, 2021, in Bayonne, N.J.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
But here’s the thing: The vast majority of people in the market for an office, public facility or home made out of shipping containers don’t buy them heavily used, because doing so doesn’t make financial sense.
“When you’re building a $100,000, $200,000 structure, that $1,000 to $2,000 difference between a new container and a used container is not really significant anymore,” said Alex Rozkin, the CEO of Conexwest, a nationwide shipping container supplier. “And most customers will just opt for the new one.”
Rozkin said most customers buy old containers only to build basic structures like storage units. And new — or nearly new, “one-trip” containers — come with additional benefits.
“They don’t have the dents,” Rozkin said. “They don’t have the rust.”
Also, some municipalities, like Los Angeles, won’t allow the use of containers that are damaged, that have been previously repaired or that are more than two years old.
“If you’re using a one-time-use container … then that container would be put to better use transporting goods across seas and oceans, which is the purpose it’s meant to serve,” said architect and construction technology expert Belinda Carr in an episode of her YouTube video series.
YouTube
“The idea that you are saving the environment when you use shipping containers and that it’s a highly sustainable practice — I understand if you’re using something meant for the landfill. But if you are using a brand-new shipping container, what’s the point?”
Carr said another significant challenge is temperature regulation. Those steel boxes get very cold inside — and very, very hot.
Brooklyn, N.Y., restaurateur Joe Carroll commissioned and lived in an eye-catching shipping container home designed by LOT-EK’s Tolla and Lignano for five years. The home is prominently featured in a new documentary about the architects’ work, We Start With the Things We Find.
Restaurateur Joe Carroll’s LOT-EK-designed home in Brooklyn, New York.
Danny Bright
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Danny Bright
Restaurateur Joe Carroll’s LOT-EK-designed home in Brooklyn, New York.
Danny Bright
Carroll told NPR that he appreciated many things about LOT-EK’s approach.
“It’s about designing structures that are unique looking, not just a stack of cubes,” said Carroll.
But Carroll also said his energy bills were sky high.
“There was no thermal heat or solar,” he said. “We didn’t have any of that in the home.”
All that heating and cooling takes not only money but environmental resources.
So — what should we do with them?
Critics say the most environmentally friendly use of all these unused steel shipping containers is to recycle them.
“The pitch of these containers is, ‘Well, we’re saving them.’ But it doesn’t make any sense,” said San Francisco-based architect Mark Hogan of OpenScope Studio, who has publicly shared his concerns about shipping container housing. “You’d be much better off recycling the container into steel and then build out of steel studs — like the normal way you’d build a building.”
This story was produced for air by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento and edited by Jennifer Vanasco for digital and air.
Since leaving office, former Vice President Mike Pence founded the policy and advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
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Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Since leaving office, former Vice President Mike Pence founded the policy and advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Former Vice President Mike Pence played a key role in bringing President Trump to power in 2016. By putting his name on the Republican ticket, he helped reassure the Republican establishment and evangelical voters who were wary of Trump’s brash brand of populism.
Pence’s departure from Trump’s leadership of the Republican party began when Trump called on Pence to refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election — pressure Pence rejected.
“For four years, we had a close working relationship. It did not end well,” Pence wrote in his memoir So Help Me God, which was released in 2022.
In the years since leaving office, Pence has been advocating for an ideological restructure of the Republican party, and founded the policy and advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom. Pence builds on the theme of reimagining the Republican party in his new book What Conservatives Want, which provides a critique of the second Trump administration and what he terms the “populist right.”
In an interview with Morning Edition, Pence detailed to NPR’s Steve Inskeep his critique of the second Trump administration, shared his perspective on civil rights legislation and challenged Trump’s tariffs and other interventions in the economy.
Listen to the full interview by clicking on the blue play button above; and read highlights from the conversation below.
‘The populist right’ does not represent conservative beliefs
Pence believes that Trump has embraced “the populist right” over traditional conservatives in the Republican party.
The sale of economic American company U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel in Japan exemplifies this shift, Pence said.
In his first term, President Trump opposed the sale. But in his second term, he approved the sale and took a golden share — a class of shares in which a government can own a very small percentage of the company but has outsized voting rights.
Pence said that he was taken aback by Trump’s decision to take a golden share.
Free trade is essential to American conservatism
Pence takes umbrage with his former boss’ tariff-laden economic policy.
Pence said it violates conservatism’s bedrock belief in the power of free trade, and Trump has gone about granting exceptions to tariffs in an unfair way.
Granting waivers to large corporations from certain tariffs is “one of the lesser reported aspects of the tariff regime that’s been imposed by the administration,” Pence added.
Trump and Pence ran in 2020 on a mission to “drain the swamp,” rooting out government corruption and wasteful spending. However, Pence said Trump appears to have shifted from those goals.
“There’s maybe nothing more swampy than the battle over getting tariff waivers for big business,” Pence said.
Women’s rights on the right
There is a debate among the ultraconservative right about the role of women in civic life.
The concept of “household voting,” has become a familiar talking point for ultra-right-wing communities online. Supporters of “household voting” advocate that every American household should get one vote, the vote being that of the husband’s. This concept has been promoted by figures such as Abby Johnson, a prominent anti-abortion activist who spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention. When asked about whether he supported household voting, Pence said he is not aligned
“It’s one person, one vote in this country. And people have bled and died for that principle throughout the years of our history,” Pence said.
He added that American families don’t need to be propped up by government programs to boost childbirth. “What American families need is an application of the kind of principles that will create higher wages, more opportunities, more jobs,” Pence said.
Should conservatives stand for civil rights?
Pence said he was an admirer of senator and one-time presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
Notably, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Should conservatives stand for civil rights?” asked Inskeep.
Pence responded that civil rights are important to conservatives, but that equality of opportunity is what legislation ought to enshrine, not equality of outcome.
Pence added that he stood by the Supreme Court’s decision to ban partisan gerrymandering on the basis of race, rendering ineffective a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Milly Alcock in Supergirl.
Warner Bros. Pictures
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Warner Bros. Pictures
Hollywood’s newest Supergirl is kind of a dirtbag — in the good way. Fearless and grumpy, Supergirl (Milly Alcock) sets out on a quest to support a new pal’s revenge journey and to make a point that should be clear by now: Never mess with a lady’s dog. Also featuring David Corenswet and Jason Momoa, is Supergirl a worthy follow up to Superman?
If you want more DC superhero action, check out these episodes:
‘Superman’ takes off and nails the landing
‘The Batman’ puts the emo in emote
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