The Development of Container Buildings in China

Shipping containers are familiar to everyone. Long used across the transport industry, they reshaped global logistics. The 1985 U.S. film Space Rage helped draw worldwide attention to the conversion, R&D, and application of container buildings.

Among well-known overseas examples is View Tube in East London, near the Olympic Park, built specially for the 2012 London Olympics.

The Freitag store in Zurich, completed in 2006, is built from 17 containers and rises about 85 feet. Standing between a drawbridge and railway tracks, it offers sweeping views in every direction. The top floor has an observation deck overlooking the surroundings.

In 2015, China's container output reached 398,611 TEU—95% of world production—with exports of 377,778 units. Output and export value have ranked at the top globally for many years. At the same time, nearly 138,889 used containers become scrap each year, and how to handle these idle boxes is an urgent problem. China also has a large population, shrinking available urban land, and an ever-faster pace of life and work, pushing a shift away from traditional building methods toward modular construction. Against that backdrop, container buildings—among the most highly prefabricated modular forms—have gradually grown at home.

Container buildings started relatively late in China. Early uses were limited, and combinations and exterior finishes were simple. The most common sight was temporary site housing—something many people have seen.

In recent years, our company and other container enterprises have vigorously developed container buildings. Scholars at universities such as Tongji University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Tianjin University, Hunan University, and South China University of Technology have also begun studying related design ideas and structural techniques. Domestic use of containers keeps expanding.

Advantages and Technical Points of Container Buildings

First, in construction process and sequence, foundations for container buildings are highly flexible. For semi-developed or undeveloped destinations—mountains, wetlands, or sites with strong ecological value—foundation work is relatively simple and advanced, with very little environmental damage. A key reason is the foundation itself: instead of conventional deep foundations, ground-bolt technology allows construction with almost no disturbance to the original terrain.

Second is build speed. As modular construction, about 70% of the work can be finished in the factory, so erection is very fast. Foundation work for an 800 sqm traditional concrete building takes at least one to one and a half weeks. An 800 sqm container building space can be completed in about a day and a half. In the future we will build houses like stacking blocks—and that future is arriving quickly.

Third is reuse. A container building is a refined steel structure. After a traditional building is demolished it becomes construction waste, while a container building can be reused at rates up to 75%. It is easy to dismantle and move, with clear advantages wherever reuse and flexible development matter.

Finally, container buildings offer strong wind and seismic resistance. On site they use little water and electricity and generate very little waste, cutting dust and construction waste by more than 90% versus traditional buildings—a disruptive change and a major advantage.

At this point someone may ask: with so many strengths, are there no drawbacks? For example, safety—if a container once carried toxic or hazardous cargo, how is building safety guaranteed? That is a real issue. As noted above, after retirement some used boxes are badly damaged and corroded from shipping, and there is often no reliable way to know what they previously carried. The most critical issue is space: the length, width, and height of familiar logistics containers are not suited to living. So although many firms remake second-hand or scrap containers into buildings, our company never advocates converting old boxes directly. All container modular buildings we use are new units. Designed for architecture, they meet living-space needs and offer strong safety assurance.

To meet building functions, structural requirements must be respected during construction. After several containers are joined into one structure, connections between boxes and the foundation, and between boxes, are critical to overall load capacity. Current joint methods mainly include welding, corner-fitting connections, pad connections, and corner-post connections. Of these four, welded joints use less material and carry higher loads, but on-site work is heavier and later dismantling is more cumbersome; corner fittings, short-column pad connections, and corner-post connections are simpler on site but carry less load and must be chosen for each project's conditions.

In design, many people who have not worked closely with container modular buildings assume they mean cheap, fixed shapes and plain, dated looks. In fact, container buildings make it easier to realize creative product design. Abroad, many highly fashionable, inventive buildings are made from containers.

Hotel and cafe exterior

Hotel guest-room exterior

Cafe interior

Guest-room interior

Applications of Container Buildings

First, supporting leisure and tourism destinations—for example cultural-tourism hotels, especially scenic areas, parks, or popular rural complexes that lack construction land quotas. The special nature of container buildings makes hotel development possible. Our company's riverside wild-luxury hotel is one example. Beyond hotels there are clubs, senior apartments, and more. For instance, Kangying Club, built by our company with 34 containers, created a smart senior-care showroom and sales center with zones for wellness, healthy longevity, joyful aging, and human-centered smart living—highlighting people-first design, an integrated intelligent platform, butler-style service, and medical green-channel links to build a model senior-care community serving diverse older adults.

There are also container experience stores, markets, and similar uses.

More and more places now use container buildings. In 2016, Several Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Further Strengthening Urban Planning and Construction Management set a goal that, within about 10 years, prefabricated buildings should account for 30% of new construction. In March 2017, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development released the 13th Five-Year Plan for Building Energy Efficiency and Green Building Development, calling for full advancement: extending energy-saving and green ideas across the whole building sector; vigorously developing prefabricated-building production bases; cultivating integrated design–production–construction leading enterprises; and improving related policies, standards, and technical systems. By 2020, green building materials were to exceed 40% of new urban buildings, and prefabricated buildings more than 15% of new urban construction.

Cost of Container Buildings

Finally, on cost: compared with traditional steel structures, prices are similar, but once construction costs are included, container buildings come in below traditional buildings.

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