Our Company GM Zhao Xiangyang Interviewed for China Archives News Glorious 70 Years
In May 2019, the Glorious 70 Years yearbook interview series, jointly organized by Shanghai Archives News, the Faces program team, and other partners, was held at Shanghai Tower. Our company GM Zhao Xiangyang took part in the interview and introduced to the media our company's development path, challenges facing the prefabricated container industry, our goals, and our competitive strengths.
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— Interview transcript below:
Glorious 70 Years interview Q1: Please share a story of how you or your enterprise has grown together with the Republic;**
A1: Since the 18th National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping has proposed and repeatedly stressed that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," elevating green environmental protection to an unprecedented policy height. Every industry has gained a deeper understanding of green practices and taken stronger action.
China's steel output accounts for 50% of global production, with overcapacity of more than $13,888,889. In developed markets such as the United States and Japan, steel used in steel-structure buildings accounts for about 30% of steel output, and steel-structure floor area exceeds 40% of total building area, while in China the share is still under 5%. China also has the world's largest housing demand, so conditions for developing steel-structure prefabricated buildings are uniquely favorable.
Our company focuses on prefabricated steel-structure buildings—a form of green construction that answers national policy and follows the market trend toward environmental protection. Prefabricated steel buildings in China are still at an early stage, yet they carry the natural advantages of "four savings and one environmental protection": land saving, water saving, material saving, and energy saving in construction, plus no construction waste and no environmental pollution. They also raise safety and civilized construction standards, shorten project cycles, reduce dependence on labor, avoid construction waste, improve overall social benefit and housing quality, and provide healthy, comfortable, efficient spaces that coexist with nature. This fits China's vision of eco-friendly, green, sustainable development.
Take prefabricated buildings that use containers as modular carriers. Global container stock stands at about $5,555,556 TEU, with a service life of about 10 years, and roughly $416,667 TEU retired each year. Container architecture is a relatively new building type with only about 20 years of history, and it has entered the public eye widely only in the past decade. In the 1970s, British architect Nicholas proposed converting containers into habitable buildings, but the idea drew little attention then. In November 1987, U.S. architect Phillip Clark filed a technical patent for converting steel shipping containers into buildings; the patent was granted in August 1989. Since then container buildings have gradually appeared. Today their scale and design complexity keep growing worldwide, and the architectural performance of the boxes keeps advancing. Their popularity rests on natural strengths:
As modular building units, containers are recycled, so construction cost is low,
Short build cycles: about 80% is factory-prefabricated and assembled on site, greatly cutting labor,
Green and eco-friendly: energy, water, and material savings, with no construction waste,
Easy to assemble and transport,
Highly open spatial flexibility, growable and freely adjustable, with strong visual impact.
Large-scale container modular projects are also emerging, such as university dormitories in Amsterdam, container hotels in Hong Kong, Japan's Nakagin Capsule Tower, and one of the stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar—all built with containers. In China, newly completed examples include the Xiong'an Civic Center in Beijing, a container creative office park in Shanghai's Baoshan District, a container commercial street market in Hongkou District, and container sales centers for developers such as Vanke.
I believe that as awareness of prefabricated buildings and green principles grows, even though approval rules, land policy, and other factors still slow container buildings today, greater inclusiveness, technology, and innovation in architecture will follow, and prefabricated building forms will become more diverse.
Q2: Please introduce your enterprise and services to viewers at home;
A2: Our company is a new entrepreneurial firm focused on R&D for prefabricated and modular buildings. Our main products center on recycled containers—giving them a second life as homes, commercial show spaces, public facilities, and more.
Our service scope also covers urban cultural theme design—sports-themed towns, sports and entertainment theme parks, tourism resort planning, cultural tourism boutique-stay design, commercial leisure districts, and more—delivered through container modular design as the spatial carrier for scenic supporting facilities, brand roadshows, commercial facilities, villa residences, cultural and education facilities, and similar uses.
Our company vision: we work at the crossroads of temporary and permanent architecture, continually seeking to push conceptual boundaries and the potential of the humble container as a building material of the future. That is the mission of everyone at our company!
Q3: What opportunity led you to choose and enter this industry;
A3: Our team has been building this venture for five years. The parent company, Shanghai Jianmai Media, mainly focused on commercial brand mobile exhibitions, marketing planning, and event execution—mobile ad vehicles, caravans, display vehicles, mobile container showrooms, and agency work for brand mobile marketing campaigns.
We truly entered the prefabricated building sector around a landmark event in 2018: WIEE, the World Innovation and Entrepreneurship Expo, held on the Tongji University campus. With a short construction window, limited budget, a ban on construction waste and even noise on campus, and a need to fit the innovation-expo theme, we used 110 containers in an innovative modular industrial-style design that met the client's value and use needs well. We also delivered container commercial facilities for mid-to-large tourism resorts (retail, reception, landmark towers, gatehouses, public washrooms, and more) and boutique-stay hotels. That opportunity led us to study the industry deeply, research the global market, and decide to commit to green prefabricated buildings. At first we were optimistic about the outlook; we truly wanted to unlock the team's full potential—to protect the natural environment, produce no waste, make full use of resources nature provides, stay closer to nature and ecology, and truly realize "ecology first, green development." We keep putting eco-environmental methods and green low-carbon operations into practice across commercial, residential, and public-resource uses.
Q4: What products and services can the company offer clients at this stage;
A4: Our company is built on prefabricated modules and container combination buildings. With the dual strengths of a quality team and creative technology, we serve the full industry chain of container building design R&D, product manufacturing, and project operations.
We now have a solid container architectural design team and a modern container manufacturing plant, and have formed a one-stop system covering design R&D, factory production, packing and transport, on-site installation, maintenance and upgrades, system setup, and joint marketing.
Current projects cover urban cultural theme design, container modular applications, and more.
Q5: As market demand grows, what is your core competitiveness or advantage;
A5: Our company's core competitiveness is, first, a maker-style design team, and second, product technology R&D. Our team includes industry talent from institutions such as the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, and Tongji University—members from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s generations. Those from the 1970s excel in management, the 1980s in experience, and the 1990s in creative innovation. Different age groups work across departments and complement one another so every project balances steadiness and innovation. Technically, our company holds distinctive advantages in prefabricated buildings: we continually absorb advanced practices from abroad while designers and engineers focus on developing our own core technologies.
We also pursue a brand strategy that emphasizes technical design, quality control, material safety, and construction safety—bringing clients modern architectural aesthetics and a humanistic experience.
Q6: As company leadership, what is your plan for the next three to five years;
A6: With environmental philosophy first and advanced technology as the driver, we hope to find breakthroughs that help resolve current policy and market barriers. Over the next three to five years we aim for three breakthroughs: first, core technology—launch advanced prefabricated modular products and deliver modern modular building projects; second, market recognition—raise acceptance and reputation for container modular products, help move industry standards and approval policy forward, and build our company's container modular building brand; third, respond to national guidance and, based on our own strength, better advance policy progress and the company's capital operations!
Q7: What change do you hope this CCTV-linked activity will bring to enterprise development;
A7: First, help viewers understand the concept of the prefabricated building industry and the still-fresh idea of container modular buildings, strengthen environmental awareness in green building, and accept the concept and benefits of container modular applications.
Second, we hope this CCTV-linked activity helps more people learn that a team at our company is doing this work—work with broad prospects that still faces policy limits and other difficulties. We know its benefits for the environment, ecology, and green protection, and we know there is huge real market demand, so we will keep running on this path.
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