Barcelona Builds Affordable Homes – Out of Shipping Containers!

A building near Barcelona’s Las Ramblas area in Spain is not a typical one: made from disused shipping containers, the structure was built to provide affordable homes and help tackle the city’s social housing crisis.

The building – which was completed in December and had its first residents move in by the following month – is part of 65 social housing projects in a plan to provide vulnerable people with nearly 4,500 homes, according to City Hall City Hall spokeswoman Rosa Diaz.

“We are trying new types of projects that are sustainable … the need for mostly affordable housing is growing because prices have skyrocketed in recent years,” says Diaz to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Oscar Martinez Rivera, a social affairs professor at Barcelona’s Ramon Llull University, adds that shipping container buildings – which are cheaper and easier build than traditional ones – could help people stay in their communities, highlighting, “It is essential (for neighbourhoods) to maintain local residents because otherwise there will come a time when there will only be people passing through and almost no one living there.”