Some New Yorkers may soon feel boxed in — by choice.
Construction on a new co-op building made of surplus shipping containers is set to start in Noho. Architect David Wallance has teamed with Global Building Modules, a developer specializing in shipping-container buildings, to construct the project at 372 Lafayette Street.
The six-story building with eight units will replace a one-story garage on the southwest corner of Lafayette and Great Jones streets. With its red-metal frame, the building will be distinct from the neighborhood architecture. It will have large windows and balconies that are set back, facing Great Jones Street.
Global Buildings Modules has an office in London, where construction with standardized containers has become a trend. In 2001, Urban Space Management constructed the first Container City in London’s Docklands as a way to provide affordable work space for artists. Since then, the company has built several developments from shipping containers, and the idea has caught on in the States.
In 2003, Mark Strauss, director of planning for Fox & Fowle Architects, won the idea competition for Boston’s Society of Architects with the concept of a 351-unit housing development that would also include retail and office space. The idea, which was never built, required the use of more than 3,000 shipping containers. Strauss preferred shipping containers because the material is inexpensive, sturdy and readily available due to the amount of containers that arrive in New York ports. (A recent trade imbalance left thousands of shipping containers at East Coast ports; it’s a financial loss for shippers to return the containers empty.)
In the past few years, both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in Manhattan held exhibits about the use of shipping containers as housing material. The steel, rust-resistant containers are ideal because they typically come insulated with wooden floors, saving time and money in the building process. The average shipping container is 8.5 feet high and 8 feet wide, and can be extended in length by removing the sidings.