Design a Shipping Container Venue

The Challenge

Your challenge is to design a pop-up venue for Grant Park in downtown Chicago out of standard industrial shipping containers. You will be designing an entertainment or restaurant/cafe space on Butler Field (near the Petrillo Music Shell), that can be constructed for the summertime surge of patrons, then disassembled and stored for the winter. 

Chicago

During the summertime, downtown Chicago experiences a surge of tourism. As the third largest city in the United States, with a population of nearly three million people, and over forty million people that visit Chicago annually, Chicago is a boom for economic growth during this time.

With events ranging from the Chicago Jazz Festival, Taste of Chicago, and Lollapalooza, Grant Park and nearby Millennium Park are prime locations for visitors both local and abroad.

The Shipping Container

These intermodal freight containers have a standard size of 20 feet long by 8 feet wide by 8 feet high (although there are some that vary slightly). They are typically made of corrugated weathering (commonly known as the trademarked COR-TEN) steel, and have simple ‘twistlock’ corners for easy stacking, locking, and craning. These containers are ideal for construction because they can be transported to a site in so many different ways (and can carry some of the other construction materials).

They can be shipped by rail, container ship, or semi-trailer truck. However, there are some drawbacks too. The containers are not insulated and do not provide protection against heat and cold on the inside. 

The Problem

With an over-abundant supply of shipping containers, these extra shipping containers can be reused for other purposes.

• Purpose: Create a pop-up summer venue space for surge of visitors by repurposing shipping containers
• Location: Grant Park's Butler Field (with the Petrillo Music Shell)
• Target audience: Local and abroad visitors to the downtown Chicago
• Size limitations: One or more shipping containers (40 feet x 8 feet x 8 feet each)

Gather as much information as possible about shipping containers and your site, along with the people who will use it. You can't propose solutions until you figure out and document the design problem.

One way to get started is to think of the 5 W's: Who, What, When, Where, Why.

Who

Who will use this venue? Who will visit this venue? Who will this venue serve? 

What

What type of venue is this? What will this venue do for visitors? What materials will be used for the venue? What 

When

When will this venue be present? When will visitors visit more often? When will this venue be constructed? Removed?

Where

Where will this venue be located? Where will the venue be stored?

Why

Why is this venue being created? Why is this venue being located downtown? Why will visitors stop by this venue?

Visit the site

• Visit the location where this shipping container will be placed. Take measurements of the space and shipping container to get a better idea for how your shipping container will sit on the site.
• Walk around the area. What is around the park?  Are there trees? Are there people? Are there other parks? buildings? What services are offered nearby? Is it located near transportation?
• Record observations. What do you notice about the park? How many people visit the park? What are people doing at the park? Is there an event happening at the park?

What are other people doing?

• Research what other people are doing with shipping containers. How does this affect your design thinking? Have these projects been successful? What has worked? What hasn't worked?

In the Brainstorm Ideas step of the design process, you put some early ideas down on paper that show what you've found in the Collect Info step. You also might take more photos to show specific new ideas you have. 

The simple diagrams you make here will help you understand how the site location and design compare with your new ideas.

Visit the site

• Visit the location where this shipping container will be placed. Take measurements of the space and shipping container to get a better idea for how your shipping container will sit on the site.
• Walk around the area. What is around the park?  Are there trees? Are there people? Are there other parks? buildings? What services are offered nearby? Is it located near transportation?
• Record observations. What do you notice about the park? How many people visit the park? What are people doing at the park? Is there an event happening at the park?

What are other people doing?

• Research what other people are doing with shipping containers. How does this affect your design thinking? Have these projects been successful? What has worked? What hasn't worked? Check out Latent Design's Boombox project. 

In the Develop Solutions step, your rough ideas come together with drawings and models that can show others your solutions for a shipping container home.

Important! Since DiscoverDesign is about investigating the design process, the other people viewing your project - other students around the country, your teacher, and mentors - want to see how your ideas have changed over time. This means that while you're working on your digital model, you’ll want to be sure to keep re-saving it with a new file name every few days as you work through the steps.

1. Create a physical model of your shipping container design
2. Create a digital model of your shipping container design using SketchUp

NOTE: When using SketchUp, you are limited to downloading people, trees, and the Petrillo Music Shell from the Warehouse.

Remember, your explanation text, and the types of drawings, images, and models you share need to tell the whole story of your project to someone who may or may not have ever visited your site or even your city.

Continue to collect feedback from your peers, teachers and the online community to help you improve on your final design. Be sure to review and add constructive comments on the work of other students who are solving the same design problem. If your ideas change, be sure to explain your thinking and let others know about the new work you have posted to your account.

You might want to share floor plans, elevations, renderings of your digital model, photos of a physical model, or a video animation of your model.

• Review your design and test it against your original problem statement that you wrote for the Overview. Does it meet this criteria?
• Make a list of your ideas, sketches, and study models. For your final design you will want to write and post a short but effective paragraph of your process and the unique solutions you found developed. Tell us about your ideas.
• Your teacher and architectural mentors will be looking for these things:
  1. originality in your design
  2. your ability to creatively solve the design challenge
  3. the quality of images, sketches, drawings, and models you have uploaded in each of the five design process steps (Overview, Collect Info, Brainstorm Ideas, Develop Solutions, and Final Design). 
  4. how well you have written about and explained your thinking in each of the design process steps