Contain Yourself: Technion Students Create Stylish Steel Spaces Amid Israel’s Housing Shortage
“This article was re-published with permission from NoCamels.com – Israeli Innovation News.
The idea of living in a shipping container is not a new concept, but it may be becoming a fairly popular one. These containers are known to be easy to maintain, inexpensive, portable, durable, and an eco-friendly alternative to traditional building materials. The sustainability and affordability of containers have become so promising that some industry professionals even consider it the future of housing.
In Israel, however, where a population boom has led to crowded conditions and even a housing shortage driving up prices, there are still local issues that make it difficult to build containers for housing quickly and affordably. First, planning laws state that the minimum width of a room is 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) whereas the average width of a container 2.3 meters (7.5 feet). Second, civil defense guidelines in the country call for the addition of reinforced concrete “safe rooms” (or “mamad” in Hebrew) in homes and buildings, as mandated by the IDF Home Command since 1992 (after the first Gulf War) to protect people seeking refuge in the sealed rooms from incoming attacks.
Architecture students at the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning may not be able to change local law, but they have recently come up with some innovative solutions to combat the housing dilemma.
The students completed an innovative semester project in March, designing apartments and student dormitories made of large, standardized shipping containers developed and built for intermodal freight cargo transport. The project was conducted in the framework of the Technion students’ “One to One Studio” under the direction of project manager, PhD candidate and adjunct lecturer Guy Austern, and under the supervision of notable Israeli Architect Shamay Assif, who became Chair of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies and a professor at the Technion following roles as head of building and planning at the Israeli Ministry of Interior.
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