How 16 containers became 8 market-rate Phoenix apartments

with Phoenix we don't have buildings that were once warehouses or manufacturing facilities that now everyone is turning into lofts, we don't have the manufacturing facilities where ships were made here for a hundred years and now there are cool lofts, so this shipping container allows us bring a little bit of that richness that's really missing here in Phoenix, so this tells a little bit of the story of where these things have been, they've been traveling around the world and now they're stuck here in Phoenix. and for someone to live there it's a really good story because of our trade deficit in the United States, we're sitting on thousands and thousands of shipping

containers

, it's amazing the yards you walk through and you never end up shipping

containers

, so it's expensive. breaking them down and sending them back to China to recycle is very expensive so this is a very small part of it but it is a process and one of those solutions was a real challenge to make

market

rate

apartments

using containers that look a lot . of renderings of apartment projects and not many of them are built.

I think it's difficult to do something that isn't done often and I think it makes the sensors efficient, but I think that efficiency is largely due to the fact that the architect was the general contractor and on the development team, the set of containers took probably four hours, we had never done it before, so we had a lot of backup plans, one of the biggest challenges that a lot of people don't think about when In the container project, there is a big box that you have to move and it It takes a lot to do it, whether it's a forklift or a crane, so you have to be really efficient about what you do, when you do it, and where you do it.

They delivered to me from Long Beach, it's not like you say hey Long Beach, I want to go see the containers and they come out, you say, okay, move that one. I want to see that one, move that one. You thought it was crazy, right? Go outside and there are thousands of containers. I mean, I want all the blues. You really just have to hope for the best. You can get a type of shipping container that is cargo worthy and we found a broker who was willing to work with us. and you get all the blue ones and they ship them here and you get one one day and maybe if it's three the next day or next week you have to be able to download them properly, so having a small site and having the infrastructure to do that is really difficult, so we had a garden that everyone went to we worked on them a little bit before and then one day we thought it was going to take us two days to set them up the first day we finished at two o'clock that day and so it was really cool how quickly which went together and the doors alternate between down and up, but the doors stay as they are, we weld them in place, they don't move, so they can't all close.

This project I mean, I think in places like, for example, Charleston, South Carolina, where hurricanes happen. I think it would be cool to build something like this and be able to close it and then after the storm just open it. up because they don't go anywhere, we stayed true to how the container works, they are connected to each other at the top just like they are connected on ships, there is a cam lock that puts them on the ground and then you turn the cam close locked and this is how the container is, not to fight it, but let's use it as is, then you can see that the base of these is actually on an extended base, they are not in contact with the ground, so the containers settle. four points, that's how they're made to ship and that's what we did: we support them on four points so these things float off the ground and for us it's cool to just touch the landscape in a very small number of points, it's also cool for attention to water, it doesn't allow it, we don't have to cover the whole ground with it, part of the design process, what we do and that's one of those things in the field: we had all these containers in a yard and we said okay . this side makes a lot of sense because here it marks that this side let's put that inside it has a big dent it's kind of a puzzle you have to figure out which container goes where people always say so what are you coating it? in or you're really leaving it like that and for us it was.

I'm going to ask questions and there are practical reasons why we never have to paint it, but architectural II just exposing the container as it is, we chose the Navy. Because it looks great with rust and you just put it, the shipping dinners are made from Corten steel so when it rusts it seals and they are made for really harsh environments crossing the ocean, salt water and storms, so they are really durable. and you can see the type of rust that comes out, it's different than typical steel that can rust, these don't rust, you know, the jokes and business we call that patina, okay, it starts to gain character, no, no , no no. ugly rust, its patina, you know, in general we were fine with all these kinds of scratches.

I mean, these things have been shipped and transported and moved, so there's a lot of damage, you know, we had some details about overly large dents towards the Inside you can see this one here has a dent towards the outside. They have patched it in a panel. You can see it's welded over there. That was all fine with us, as long as the corner posts weren't structurally damaged. Are you OK. So that was important, so we just created a specification that made sense for the containers we wanted and then we had other challenges. Here we are right on Grand Avenue, which is a major artery that connects downtown Phoenix to the interstate and the entire West Valley, so one of the big challenges here is how we approach this street.

We actually base the containers inwards, towards a central patio. We really wanted to create something that allowed the residents to feel safe so that this didn't feel like a container inside and you don't see anything true, I'm not missing out on a good thing, we used the florist, we covered them in a floor fully encapsulated in a body epoxy whole and then each unit is two containers so here we can keep the outer skin where it is open where the doors use the existing opening in the structure to glaze so I think you really get the feeling that you are in the container and you are looking through the main window.

Each apartment is two 40-foot shipping containers. They are tall cubes, the nine alfie, we can take out an 8 foot lid that still has room for the four utilities and sepa

rate

them again, so right in the middle is the junction between the two containers, so this is one of eight feet. container here's the other one, we kept a really simple, open, modern floor plan but there aren't really any doors separating the living room space from the bedroom and I think one of the strongest design moves we made here coming into these projects, we had never made sugar products before. we want to make sure we have some possible unknowns: we build a conventional masonry core, the houses, all the mechanical and electrical plumbing, imagine this is the outside wall of the container, you cut a hole in the container and this is actually in the conventional container . built with a cement core, so all the pipes, all the water, all the sewers, everything in that core of conventional construction and the importance of that is not really that it is less expensive, but in this first project we are using subcontractors who are not familiar with work in shipping. containers if we want to pay a premium based on the unknown, so our mechanical plumbing, electrical and fire sprinkler guys focus very easily on a structure basically built with wood frames, so on the wet side of the kitchen, all water and sewer are on this side.

It was actually on both parts of the structure, conventionally, and then on the dry side and only the electrical side of the kitchen is on this side. We have the laundry room on this side built conventionally and we also have the bathrooms on the conventional side. If you come? outside the container to the conventional core, this is also unit 88, so we have 80 shower and drop bars etc., this is no longer the container, you add it well, yes, when you are outside, I see that between the sacks and the containers there's a masonry structure that we're standing in right now with the houses with all the wet pipes because you didn't want to try to put everything in the container because it's easier to build that way or what is it actually?

It's easier to build that way now that we've done it, but we did it before we did it, we didn't know it and the subcontractors who were actually going to do the work didn't know it, so we didn't want to pay a premium for the unknown, this in It's actually pretty big, I mean, it's a queen size bed and you can have a lot of room, yeah, because we have two containers together, we have about a foot on each side, so you're left with about fourteen feet wide, so this It's seven hundred and forty square feet, it's a one-bedroom apartment, but it's a large one-bedroom apartment, we thought it made a lot of sense that a shipping container wouldn't necessarily fit everything you could into it, but it has a more open feel, the floor It's one of those really important things because the floors tell a story, you can see what's been scraped and there are barrel rings and things like that, you can see the steps from where a tie is placed here.

See here, these increases were made so that forklifts could fit in here. Drive Allen so he can see here where there are footprints and we just seal it. See these are steel plates that are on every container where if you have a dead body or something they can pick up from the back of a sinking tilt truck so that when it sits on a truck it fits the rig, yeah this it's 1/8 inch plywood and then this is steel, so all the white pieces are steel here. of conversations about what was on the floor when we sealed it, we don't have a lot of that in Phoenix and so it brings a little bit of richness.

I always understand the comic. I make a container that, oh, it's dangerous, the chemicals. on the floor, don't you know? Can you say yes we can ship containers to Australia which has much stricter pesticide regulations? We're talking just to be safe, we totally encapsulate the floor so it has multiple layers of an epoxy body this is conventionally framed on the inside so we can knock down our glare and for a safe insulation value to meet residential codes, that's probably the funniest question we get, yes people always ask how we cool it in the desert, what are they? they're hot for us, we do a lot of houses with steel siding, steel, it's one of those things that doesn't store heat all day like masonry or dough, it releases it very quickly even though our walls are much taller. -value of what the code requires, we have not had any problems, these things are incredibly efficient and waterproof and waterproof.

Do you see a time where shipping containers have an advantage over another type of building when the economies of scale, well, I think I can gain a lot? It makes sense in cities where it costs a lot more to build in a dozen Phoenix, right, you're still paying the same amount for the shipping container whether you're in San Francisco or here, obviously the land costs a lot more, but here it does. It costs us $150 per foot to build versus $400 per foot to build in San Francisco, let's say the shipping container still costs the same amount, so you'll get the closure and framing for the same price no matter where you build it, etc. which makes a lot of sense, I'm sure there are a lot of things that affect the ability to scale shipping containers and in the United States we have very strict codes and because of that, they are made of steel, it is a combustible material, so we are limited by the square meters and height.

I would love to be able to stack them and I think there are projects that you can see in Amsterdam and Johannesburg, South Africa where they have done it, but we can't do it in the United States with our live security codes, so we can go with high 3i

apartments

, so if you coat or monokote with a fireproof material on the outside, then you could definitely do it and that can be a really smart way if we can get eight or ten high. They create elevator cores and cover them all, the structure supports it well, they make it in a stack of eight ten ion canisters and they support 275 pounds per square foot, which is more than five times what we normally design, so it is very strong and I would love it. the opportunity to be able to do that, but also one of the things that we are limited in is actually financing that the banks still won't agree to finance a shipping container project even though it is much stronger than boxes of stucco that everyone else is doing. building, they don't know what it is, you know, we've gotten questions from very smart people saying, "hey, kit," this could be a HUD type product where it's a trailer and someone couldput it in their truck and take it with them and it's not even close to that, it's welded to the ground and it's bonded together, it's a building built to the International Building Code and so to us it's no different than any other module or building block, so financing is really difficult, so all the projects that we have done have been 100 percent cash or 100 percent equity and that has been the only way we can do it because there is no debt for shipping container projects.

We hope to change that a little. Of the things we want to do are townhouses that require actually getting adequate compensation, the appraisers come out. I don't know how to value a shipping container, so there are challenges that we hope to start as a small step to the point where there is a learning curve and hopefully the banks can get involved just like the city does.