If somebody ask you if you like to living in a container house, I think most people would say no. As you may know, in our memories container house has always been a crappy modified shipping container. They are dirty, narrow and ugly. Who ever choose to live in a container house must be homeless people, you may think. The reality is the opposite. As steel manufacturing technology developed and new material been invented, container house is no longer how we imagine it has been. After designed by professional designer, container house just looks like a ordinary house, but better. How is it better? You may think. The difference of it to traditional building is drastic. Container house are built by frames and panels. Instead of year long construction with dust and heavy lifting. Container house requires only few days to weeks depend on the project. So it is cost efficient in terms of labour cost. Compare to developing country, developed countries has much high labour cost. I lived in Australia for ten years, if I need a handy man for some fixing, I would rather learn it from Youtube and buy all the tools which steel cost less than hire a handy man.

There are mainly three types of container houses available in the market: foldable container house, quick assemble container house and flat packed container house. Foldable container house was well known are the pandemic happened in Wuhan as it was where hospitals were settled for months. A standard foldable container house requires only two people to assemble. Experienced workers takes less than half hour to get a foldable container house fully functioning with electricity and furniture installed. What makes it so fast to be functioning? The answer is in its name. Foldable container house was designed to be folded while transport, once it arrives site, all the work is just unfold the box. It even comes with windows and doors in place.

Quick assembled container house is the opposite to foldable container house. Instead of been convenient and easy to set up, fast assemble container house focus on customization and transportation. It comes in parts of beam, panel, connection parts and furnish material. Although it takes longer to assemble , it still faster than traditional construction period.

Flat packed container house gained advantages of both foldable container house and quick assembled container houses. It has pre-manufactured base and ceilings with all frames and panels, it was also function as the package for other parts. It is also easier to assemble compare to quick assembled container house, as the ceiling and floor are already assembled. It is also as flexible as quick assembled container in terms of modifiable.

Some may think container house have lame appearance. But with the help of PU metal panels. The appearance can be fixed. Even have better looks than recruit lots of workers for painting. By engraving on metal sheets, these panels have better light reflection end result than other popular furnishing materials. Other than the looks, it is more durable than other material. By having special coating to against chemical damage.

In conclusion container houses provide us more choice in term of houses for living. It have obvious advantage compare to traditional buildings as it takes much shorter time to be ready for living. In some situation this can be the determination characteristic for the choice. Like in Wuhan, when the pandemic started, there was not enough space in hospitals. Government decided to use container house to build emergency hospitals on Leishen Mountain and Huoshen Mountain. The whole construction takes only 10 and 12 days, they are able to contain more than 2,500 patients. On the other hand, traditional housing are able to be modified and fixed in local easily as the container houses need counter parts to fix.