Shipping container housing for students

Keetwonen (Amsterdam student housing) – called “the biggest container city in the world” Keetwonen provides popular housing for students in Amsterdam, 1000 units.  Each has its own kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, study room, and balcony.

The initial fears of some people that the container homes would be too small, too noisy, too cold or too hot, all turned out to be unfounded: : they turned out to be spacious, quiet and well insulated and certainly offer value for money, compared to other student homes in the city.

The project came about during a student housing shortage in Amsterdam in 2002.  Temporary sites were available and Tempohousing came up with the idea of using shipping containers as a quick, mobile, prefabricated solution.

To keep the cost down, the quality high and building time short, we looked for ways to maximum prefabrication. We traveled to China, but at first we found no factory that could offer the required quality. And then we found a Dutch engineer and factory owner with years of experience in working in China and with him we built a dedicated factory that was able to cope with the tough building regulations in Holland. The production in the new facility in China started in the spring of 2005 and soon, at a speed of 50 units a week, the complete container homes – including interiors- arrived in Amsterdam, ready to be stacked like Lego blocks.

The project was finished in 2006 and was scheduled for relocation after five years (another advantage of using containers), but that date has been pushed back to 2016.  Saw it here.