 | FUTURE SHACK Sean Godsell’s prototype emergency housing redeploys the ubiquitous shipping container. Review by Sand Helsel.
Photography by Earl Carter.
| Review |
“Twenty foot of solid steel. Will last a lifetime. Second-hand and slightly salt-stained,
but that’s what gives it character. Fully fitted, ready to use; just add water and gas
(bottle) and you’re ready to go. Only $30,000 on the road, but we can do something
on the price if you buy in bulk.”
Future Shack. I’m sold. Buying a house is as easy as buying a car – and cheap!
Whether or not one conjures up images (or voices) from sales pitches, miracle cures
or labour-saving devices, there’s something quite extraordinary about one’s first
encounter with Future Shack. Despite its current location in a goods yard behind a
light industrial unit in Flemington where it was fabricated, I could see it on my bit of
sand dune in Gippsland. I want one. My colleague could imagine getting old in one at
the back of his garden in Clifton Hill. Although memories of holidays at the beach may
be evoked, Godsell’s agenda is serious. This is an architecture that addresses needs
rather than desires. But like most good projects it does both.
Future Shack is the prototype for mass-produced, relocatable emergency and relief
housing. The house has applications for a variety of needs – post flood, fire,
earthquake, typhoon, or similar natural disasters; temporary housing; third world
housing; remote housing. The main volume of the building is a recycled 20-foot
shipping container, a universal module that is mass-produced and inexpensive, robust
and durable. As a basic unit the container can be stockpiled for use as required by
aid-coordination agencies, or in locations prone to disaster. It is designed to be
shipped, and is easily transported by road and rail. All infrastructure for handing the
module is available throughout the world.
The unit is totally self-contained. Packed inside are water tanks, solar power cells,
access ramp, roof ladder, parasol roof and supporting structure. A satellite receiver
and external light bracket act to brace the glass interior doors in transit. The container
itself has had minimal exterior changes – several additional slots to accept the
structure, a top-hinged front opening for the entrance, and a series of operable
panels in the roof for ventilation – but nothing detracts from either its seaworthiness
or its ability to be stacked or handled identically to its unmodified kind. It remains a
container conceptually to Godsell. The clean skin of the interior is packed with his
tools for re-habitation, along with, one might expect, additional clothing, food and
blankets for the dispossessed.
Future Shack can be fully erected in 24 hours. A pair of steel brackets with
telescoping legs is fixed to the outside of the container, which is located onto the site
by standard truck or rail-mounted lifting gear. Site levels are established and the legs
are pinned into position. Pivoting broad steel plates at the base of the legs eliminate
the need for footings; thus little site preparation is necessary. Uneven terrain and
slopes up to 45 degrees can be accommodated. All fixings are simple mechanisms,
requiring basic tools and skills, and little maintenance for remote locales. The building
is thereafter totally self-sustainable, capable of generating electricity, and with
communications, thermal insulation to R4.0, a shading co-efficient of 0.49, and
natural ventilation. The technology responds to the assessment and resolution of the
appropriateness for the task, not to slight-of-hand detailing designed to impress.
It could be said that we’ve seen it all before. Warren Chalk’s houses “flew” in the
early days of Archigram: a container suspended from a helicopter is a more compelling image than one transported by a basic truck. Others might cite existing
container communities such as the mining camps in Brunei and question the need for
an architect’s involvement where ad-hoc initiatives already exist. Caravans and
portable structures have worked fairly well thus far on many remote sites. An
engineer’s response to the issues raised by Godsell might be to minimise erection
schedules with inbuilt hydraulics and integrated structural systems to avoid lifting
gear. Future Shack however is different. It is significant that it is built. (Godsell self-funded
the prototype that has been on his drawing board since 1985.) And it is
clearly the work of an architect – one attempting to satisfy a social need as opposed
to an immediate problem.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the parasol roof which shades the container
and protects the water supply and outdoor space. For Godsell the pitch provides the
“universal symbol of home”, and, surprisingly enough, he’s right. (The roof is easily
adapted to local versions of “home” with its galvanised steel frame designed to
accept thatch, mud and stick, palm fronds, etc.) Any fears of the oppressive nature of
the container are allayed – the minimal floor area (15 square metres), the heat, the
repetitiveness of the module – this project is not a compromise, or an excuse. One
can imagine the containers multiplied as communities in various landscapes – as hill
towns, or protecting each other on wind-swept plains – instead of as bleak tracts of
repetitive elements. Laid end to end, large dining halls can be formed; side-by-side,
families become reunited. Peter Pragnell would call this a “friendly object”.
The project’s history runs in parallel with Godsell’s series of award winning single-family
houses. Their research agendas have been complementary: inexpensive
manufacturing and construction methods, the prototype, environmental concerns, and
the continuing search for the appropriate dwelling. The Godsell House II at Kew
demonstrates that volumetric clarity offers possibilities for complexity and richness in
everyday life; his long table, strategically positioned in the space, supports and
encourages a wide range of activities and rituals, above and beyond a deterministic
overlay of program. In Future Shack, the butt-jointed marine plywood-lined interior (first tested in the packing crate walls in the MacSween House) is conspicuously clear
of the clever single-program miniatures of the conventional family house such as
those found in a caravan. A table and two beds are hidden within the lining of the
steel shell and pulled down when needed; the kitchen and bathroom are compact
and gimmick-free.
Godsell’s developed planning and circulation strategies have a subtle presence in
Future Shack: the altered perceptions of size and scale created by the corridor
(Godsell House I); storage walls as room dividers (Godsell House II); the integrity of
interior spaces reinforced by strategically located openings (Carter/Tucker House).
From the entrance ramp one sees straight through the glass doors (or screen,
depending on climate) and on through the pivot-hinged opening behind the steel
doors at the rear. The hydraulic door to the container defines and shades a front
“verandah” created by the ramp. A series of interior spaces is articulated along the
long axis at the container’s edge. Subtle plan shifts determined by the furniture define
different qualities of space: views and access through the room are unobstructed
when the table is in position; when the beds are down the notional corridor is
blocked, promoting a sense of containment. The bathroom and kitchen are housed in
the thickened walls that run perpendicular to the axis. The container, albeit small, is
packed full of architecture, both in design and ideals.
Colleagues in typhoon and earthquake-prone Taiwan have quite understandably
embraced this project and concur with Godsell’s statement: “As architects in stable
democracies our responsibilities are reasonably clear cut. Our role in those societies
where freedom has been ripped away by force, or where nature has devastated whole
cities, or when generations of minority groups have been forced into a life of poverty
because of a political philosophy, is hazy by comparison. The need ‘to house’… offers
architects the opportunity to provide shelter for fellow human beings in need.”
Sand Helsel is associate professor of architecture at RMIT University. She wrote this
review in Taiwan during a typhoon.
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| Project Credits |
Future Shack
Architect Sean Godsell Architects. Builder RD
McGowan Building. Steel Fabricator Shush
Metal Products.
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