Project overview
This page covers two shipping container buildings in Dubai, both designed by Wrenze Steel for Super Tech Industries L.L.C as client. The first is a G+M containers structure at Dubai Hills Estate. The second is a G+M containers structure for a restaurant elsewhere in Dubai. On both, our scope was structural design.
G+M means a ground floor plus a mezzanine level. The Dubai Hills Estate render shows black containers stacked and offset to form a two-level shop with a Super Market sign. The restaurant render shows a pale, ribbed container building with large glazed openings.
Our scope
Our scope on both buildings was structural design. The model for the first project shows the containers framed as a steel structure, with the floor and roof members of each unit. For the restaurant, the analysis model shows the container walls modelled as plates, with colour contours showing stress across each face.
Shipping containers are designed as structures in their own right, but for carrying cargo, not people. Turning them into a building means checking them for building loads and for the changes the architecture makes to them.
The structure
A container is strong at its corners. The corner posts and the frame around the floor and roof carry most of the load, and the ribbed side walls stiffen the box and keep it square.
Openings change this. Cutting large doors and windows into the side walls, as both of these buildings do, removes much of that stiffness. The missing wall then has to be replaced by new steel: frames around the openings, extra columns, or beams that carry load around the cut-out. Plate modelling of the walls, like the restaurant analysis, shows where the remaining wall carries stress and where it needs help.
Stacking adds load to the lower containers, and offset stacking means some upper units bear on the middle of a lower unit rather than on its corners. These points need checking and often new support.
Containers are light, so wind uplift and sliding matter. They must be tied to each other and anchored to their foundations.
Read about our structural steel design service and our other pavilions and container structures, or request a quote for a container building.
