CREATING a circular economy through upcycling and recycling is becoming – and not before time – a trend in just about every industry and household; plastic waste fished from the sea and turned into clothing and home textiles, or battered and out-of-date furniture getting a sophisticated new look with chalk paint and varnish, companies and individuals are keen to turn what used to be considered 'rubbish' and landfill fodder into consumer goods.
Houses are no exception: A joint venture in Marbella is turning discarded shipping containers into elegant residential homes.
Lukas Schween, head of the German family architects business, and estate agent Sean Woolley of Cloud Nine Spain have teamed up to create residential properties that really are off the back of a lorry – and are environmentally-friendly, too.
Massive amounts of steel containers are disposed of all the time; even if they do not end up in landfill sites, melting them down to reuse the material drinks about eight megawatts per hour (8mWh) of electricity, without even taking into account the emissions; building a home uses up five of them, which is 17.5 tonnes of steel – an iron alloy that would otherwise involve materials mined from the earth's ever-diminishing resources.
Excavation is not normally required, no plant or heavy machinery has to be employed – creating more emissions – and the only transporting of material needed is that of shipping the containers to the site.
The building process takes around six months, most of which is carried out off-site, then the parts are set up on the end plot.
Lukas and Sean say the homes are attractive and energy-efficient – you might expect living inside a lorry to be airless and insufferably hot, but it is not like that at all; the container steel creates the structure, frame and walls, other materials are added, including plenty of glass for natural light, and the result is open and airy, as shown in the pictures.
Named 'The Astonishing Collection', these elegant eco-builds are a good size, with three to four bedrooms, one to four bathrooms, and from approximately 116 to 220 square metres.
Greater demand for sustainability: Recycling rubble and energy-efficiency
Planet-friendly, sustainable and energy-efficient homes are more in demand than ever by buyers at present – especially blue-chip property-seekers with enough funds available to allow them ample choice.
Conventional home-building is also, now, heavily focused on sustainability and on minimum power consumption needs – quality construction involving damp-proofing and insulation to prevent over-use of heating or air-conditioning are now part of the standard procedure, and developers normally have to demonstrate their projects' energy-efficiency and environmentally-friendly nature as a condition of gaining planning permission.
Solar panels are more frequently added as a standard part of the structure, taking advantage of the abundant sunlight – an average of 300 days a year in the south, east and the islands.
Furthermore, local councils are now increasingly calling for residential construction and civil engineering companies to watch their carbon footprints and aim for zero waste – in past decades, demolitions and major structural renovations would create huge amounts of rubble that would simply get dumped on a waste disposal site, whilst new building material would be mined from quarries or obtained by breaking into mountains.
These days, building rubble is more likely to be ground down and turned back into construction material, meaning nothing is disposed of and no plundering of natural resources is involved.
Last year, three villages in the southern Valencia province – Potries, Xeraco and Villalonga – were said to be among the first in Spain to build and resurface roads using recycled rubble.
Their nearest district hospital, in Gandia, was moved to a new site in April 2015 and the old structure, condemned as unsafe, demolished in 2020 – and for the first time in the region, all the rubble from the four-storey building was crushed down to be used again for new constructions.
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