Leaving aside weak Canadian puns1, there’s plenty of irony to go around in a Manchester charity-driven project to build a village for homeless men under a railway bridge — a traditional shelter for the homeless everywhere.
Aside from other unusual features of this project, worthy of note was an original expectation to build the accommodation using shipping containers. A “tiny home” fad of shipping containers as a cheap housing method has been debunked by various building industries, at least for traditional hot summer/cold winter climates.
In this case, the necessity of insulation against both summer heat and winter cold, has quite probably contributed to the unanticipated expense of shipping container homes and flipped the project to move to traditional frame construction.
Worldwide, timber costs are skyrocketing during a post-pandemic building boom. Will they cause a flip flop, reverting the construction back to shipping containers? It’s a question with no immediate answers.
Read more at the BBC: Manchester homeless village to be built under bridge
