Liberation Daily Interviews Our Company on Modular Container Buildings and the Future City

Liberation Daily conducted an in-depth interview with our company on the role of modular containers in the future city. The discussion focused on the diverse development potential of container buildings.

Below is the Liberation Daily report on this interview:

Recent World Cup coverage reminded people that even stadiums can be built from containers. With technological progress, container applications have gone far beyond imagination. Besides exhibitions, people can also use them to build schools, libraries, and entire commercial streets.

Shanghai already has container buildings—citizen service stations on streets, Party-building centers in plazas, and more. Reporters visited these distinctive buildings and explored their use cases, challenges, adaptability, and the roles they may play in the city.

An eye-catching community station

On a mild winter day along Huangjincheng Road in Changning District, Shanghai, ginkgo trees turn gold. Yellow and green leaves scatter across the pedestrian-street paving. With shops on both sides and a comfortable spatial scale, the place feels made for leisurely wandering.

At a corner of the pedestrian street stands a neat little house. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors face passersby; its warm yellow frame blends with the overall look of Huangjincheng Road. This is the "Rong–Gubei Station." Operator Dayu Construction positions it as a small community "generator" that sparks activities and builds warmer ties among residents, businesses, and visitors.

On weekends, activities inside and outside the little house draw attention: community mothers organizing charity sales, local businesses hosting parent–child flea markets, neighbors sharing knowledge of traditional architecture, children's art sessions, and robot experience events. In one year alone, the station hosted more than 80 events.

Few residents or passersby realize it is a container building. Today's container architecture is no longer the metal box of old stereotypes—it can be rich in design.

In 2020, commissioned by the relevant authorities, our company took on the Gubei Station project. The design intent was an open platform that shows the neighborhood's charm and promotes co-governance—a shared space for community businesses and a lively stage where everyone can create. With that in mind, the designer walked the streets. He found a place where many languages are spoken—a living hub for local and international friends; no traffic roar, only the ease of slow living; and Shanghai's famous ginkgo views, a pride of residents at their doorstep. So the scheme drew on the site: warm yellow ginkgo-leaf tones fused with the container cabin.

The facade facing the intersection is almost entirely floor-to-ceiling glass. The two side walls of the container can open fully, turning the cabin into a three-sided open box suited to interactive events. With a participatory design approach, the station keeps small stories of the neighborhood. Main walls use 1.6 mm weathering steel; wall panels and alloy doors and windows were all prefabricated in the factory and assembled after lifting to site; rooftop solar panels meet lightweight power needs for lighting and air conditioning.

Dayu Construction project lead Pu Ruijie clearly remembers a late night in November 2020 when a truck delivered the cabin and a crane set it at the corner. Workers began installation on landing; within two hours it was finished. The designer said that from concept and approved scheme through factory production to full installation, Gubei Station took only one month. Most time went to communication, refining the design, and approvals; actual factory production took only a few days, and on-site assembly only a few hours.

Such small station units are especially suited to container construction: controllable cost, short build cycles, corrosion-resistant steel structure, resistance to magnitude-8 earthquakes and category-10 hurricanes. Most work is done in the factory, unaffected by weather and without disturbing neighbors with construction noise. Another key advantage: it need not consume building-land quotas, approval is shorter, no deep excavation is required, and the pedestrian street's original paving is left intact. Container buildings therefore suit demanding sites—sand, mud, tidal flats—or finely finished surfaces that must not be dug up again.

Pu Ruijie summarizes two years of use at Gubei Station: street-facing, open, attractive, eye-catching, and highly interactive—like an art installation. Such building units suit community generators, pop-ups, and exhibitions that invite quick participation. Compared with building a traditional station house, a container building fits just right.

A library under clear skies

Container markets and exhibitions are no longer rare—but how far can they go?

In 2018, the WIEE World Innovation and Entrepreneurship Expo opened at Tongji University's Jiading Campus and ran for nearly a year. Global participants gathered for forums, lectures, exhibitions, and creative cultural exchange. For an expo of this scale and duration, was a large new building complex necessary? Organizers finally chose to assemble 111 containers on a 2,760 sqm campus site—an exhibition architecture usable for a year and easy to dismantle.

Our company's chief designer Dai Shengxiang led the build team. He recalls first seeing the site: two large patches of unfinished earth and scattered refuse. "I thought then, luckily it was containers—if we had started traditional construction from scratch, it would have been a headache." From organization and design through revisions, approvals, and completion, the project took two months. Traditional construction at this scale would likely have needed more than half a year. Early schemes simply lined boxes along the site; freestanding containers lacked the feel of a building cluster, so the plan became a two-story container group—some with terraces, some interleaved and stacked for interest.

Challenges followed. Organizers required real shipping containers, not factory-custom new units. Dai Shengxiang went to Baoshan Port and bought used containers. Dimensions were limited: interior height under 2.4 m; after insulation and fit-out, only 2.1 m remained—uncomfortable. Stacking and interlocking many boxes, with careful design, softened that spatial feel.

Drainage was another issue. Flat container roofs pool water. Even with waterproof coatings, rain can seep in; boxes must be fully welded. Junctions with glass need U-channels to divert water, plus roof slopes. Each container interior was like a full interior fit-out—insulation, cut-outs for wiring, air conditioning, and more. The final result was strong: after distinctive finishes, the container exhibition zone was loved by young people worldwide—open, flexible, multifunctional; exhibitions and workshops by day, a stage by night. The row of buildings remained on campus for nearly a year.

Today, container building technology has advanced. Personalized projects are largely factory-custom rather than reused boxes. Metal panel heights from 2.4 m to 3.4 m are available, length can be joined as needed, interiors are mature, and complete bathroom modules can be included.

Our company's commercial director Chang Xiaojie described their campus library project in Suzhou: an irregular two-story container building with clean lines and a sky-like blue-and-white palette, museum-level visual appeal. Inside, a bright white lobby comes first. The ground-floor reading area has soft sofas, a large LED screen, and smart devices throughout. A side book niche uses rich British-style interiors.

Upstairs the mood shifts: Classic of Mountains and Seas motifs on the ceiling, traditional wood bookshelves and furniture creating a scholarly study feel. The second-floor terrace is prized—students read surrounded by trees and sky. Rooftop solar PV powers the library. Without being told, few would guess it is a container building. Visually and functionally, the interior matches—or surpasses—traditional construction.

Today such new container buildings serve many uses: exhibitions, bars, dining, guesthouses, commercial streets, industrial parks, schools, stadiums, emergency relief, and more. Materials and methods used in ordinary interiors can be applied inside container modules; comfort and aesthetics are no longer issues.

At the Qatar World Cup, a container-built stadium became a fully demountable large building. Stands were assembled from semi-open seating units—relatively simple in today's container field, needing little complex fit-out. Its greater value was showing that large buildings can be flexible, lightweight, and circular—a demonstration model.

Flexible "turns" for a more adaptable future

By Chunshen Lake in Xinzhuang, Shanghai, bright red "butterflies" seem to flutter among the trees—the "Red Living Room" Party–masses service station built with container architecture. The shell is an elegant curved surface painted in vivid patterns, breaking the stereotype that containers must be boxy.

Designers chose containers not only for short process and build time, aesthetics, controllable cost, and low-carbon benefits, but also to avoid damaging the plaza's existing paving. Interiors resemble traditional buildings and can feel even brighter and more open.

Chang Xiaojie notes that today's custom irregular combined container buildings can be restored, rebuilt into other forms, or dismantled into small modules for reuse. Our company has delivered modular sales-office projects that need not be taken apart after use—when one site finishes, the whole group can be lifted and moved to another development for reuse.

Container buildings have a theoretical service life of about 25 years—enough for public, service, and commercial facilities. More creative parks and commercial streets therefore choose them. Chang Xiaojie cites Haikou's Fengxiang 920 container night-market plaza: 46.6 mu of land south of Yehai Avenue and west of Xiangxie Garden on then-undeveloped ground. After the night market opened, the plot quickly went viral—smoke-free BBQ, late-night dining, trendy shops, music dining bars, performances, book bars, wedding photography, parking, and more.

Another case is a guesthouse in Jiaxing. From ground hardening to completion took about 45 days. Some worry container homes feel crude, like living in a workshed, short of hotel comfort—that is a misconception. Custom boutique projects use full customized fit-out: insulation, piping, wall panels, and finishes similar to traditional interiors, matching high-star hotel rooms, plus distinctive exterior paint that appeals to younger guests. One reason this Jiaxing guesthouse chose containers was poor local geology that made foundations hard; traditional methods would need at least eight months, while containers only need a hardened ground slab.

In 2016, the State Council General Office issued guidance on vigorously developing prefabricated buildings: China would promote them so that within about ten years prefabricated buildings would reach 30% of new construction floor area. Actual share remains under 5%, lagging developed countries. Industry experts forecast that over the next decade China's prefabricated-building market may reach a cumulative size of about USD $480–500 billion—huge room to grow.

Within that, containers have heated up. Versus traditional methods they can cut construction water use and concrete waste by about 60%, construction and fit-out waste by about 70%, save about half the energy overall, and raise productivity two- to threefold—low-carbon, flexible, lightweight, and movable. Critically, approvals often need not consume building-land quotas; for sales offices, stations, exhibitions, commercial streets, and industrial parks, procedures are relatively simpler.

Civilian use holds large potential. In urban renewal, flexibility and plasticity can go far beyond expectation. In villages and natural settings, constraints are fewer and possibilities endless. In global cities, streets already host container-converted mobile hotels, cafes, and shops. London uses an eight-story container building as dormitories—a technical innovation.

In the mid-20th century, Japanese architect Kenzo Tange launched Metabolism, influencing Fumihiko Maki, Kiyonori Kikutake, Kisho Kurokawa, and others. They saw the city as growing, renewing, and declining; they urged new technology and rejected fixed views of city and architecture. Their work moved from buildings toward visions of the future metropolis.

Metabolism held that each building is a living mini-city with tension and force; design must adapt to organic growth, change, metabolism, and renewal. In 1966 Tange completed the Yamanashi Cultural Hall, but unit replacement was still hard with then-available technology. Container buildings make it feasible: erect a structural frame, then insert containers as capsule-like modular units. Future updates can replace modules directly.

As urban land grows scarcer, uncertainty rises, and renewal needs diversify, container buildings may cease to mean crude industry and instead offer endless possibilities for future city renewal, growth, and risk response. As we discuss soft and hard ways to activate communities and public space, container architecture may inspire urban renewal anew.

Expert dialogue

Reporter: How do you see the future role of container buildings?

Xu Leiqing (professor, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University): As mobile, temporary architecture, containers are very useful.

First, complete boxes insert easily into modern building structures. Once the main structure is ready, insert the boxes, connect existing services, and greatly speed construction. If technology matures, spaces that can be mass-replicated—such as hotel rooms—may well use this approach. Containers as part of buildings may become more common.

Second, as independent buildings their urban uses are wide: newsstands, coffee bars, takeout kiosks, breakfast carts, pop-ups, trade fairs. Flexible, lightweight, low-carbon, assemble-and-dismantle, they add little burden to public space; future service roles are hard to overstate. Relatively few clients yet know, think of, or use them.

Third, individuals can use them as open spaces—for example park campsites rented to users.

Fourth, temporary lodging: event dormitories for sports, support housing for large music festivals—many cases already exist.

Fifth, crop production space. Agriculture can now grow plants without outdoor air or sun, using fully controlled microclimate systems in sealed cabins—placed on roofs, elevated roads, concrete walls, and more—helping face extreme climate and food shortage.

Stereotypes cast containers as rigid, closed, and low-tech; they are not. Through iteration—opening, modifying, acoustic and thermal performance—temporary buildings can better fit the future and life's changes.

Reporter: Suppose a city district starts from scratch—if water, power, and gas stubs are reserved, could public infrastructure in theory be flexibly replaced with container buildings?

Xu Leiqing: They can become supply points for urban infrastructure. The question is easy connection to city systems. We often treat containers as temporary and limited. Yet future city facilities have shorter use cycles; lifestyles and tempos accelerate; replacement may become normal.

People today want plug-and-play: propose today, finish tomorrow, use the day after, refresh in a month. From that view, temporary buildings better match future urban life. Metabolism saw the whole city as continuous growth—an idea more relevant than outdated.

Reporter: That thinking opens many new urban scenes.

Xu Leiqing: Must a book fair sit inside a large building? Give each vendor a custom container in a country park—open air or semi-outdoor; reading in nature is more appealing. Do not worry about sun and rain on books—container technology can solve that. Exhibitions last weeks at most: use and dismantle; design fold-open boxes and reuse elsewhere next year.

Or take the well-loved river-view stations along the Huangpu in Shanghai. How should stations along Suzhou Creek be built? Unlike the broad Huangpu shoreline, Suzhou Creek parcels are complex and public space for new stations is scarce—could containers work?

Reporter: So temporary buildings better match future city needs.

Xu Leiqing: Especially in megacities like Shanghai, demand for temporary and mobile buildings is large—exhibitions, festivals, events, sports, special-environment facilities. In older neighborhoods and constrained sites, temporary buildings can ease urgent facility upgrades. For sustainable urban development and resilience against uncertain risks, temporary architecture opens new possibilities.

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