Surplus shipping containers are being converted into cost-efficient homes, restaurants and shopping centres in Manila
While most surplus shipping containers in Hong Kong are being used as temporary mobile offices on building sites, Filipinos are making these steel boxes into homes, cafes and even shopping complexes.
The cost of converting the shipping containers into homes and restaurants is low, so demand for surplus boxes is growing rapidly in Manila.
'It is not only more cost-efficient than traditional construction but also eye-catching,' said Ronald Yap, chairman of Philippine company Storage Providers, which won accreditation from the Philippines' Housing and Urban Development Co-ordinating Council for innovative housing in 1996.
Steel boxes were also fast to assemble, termite proof, rust proof, and typhoon and earthquake proof, he said.
'The beauty of using containers is they require no foundation and they are moveable,' said Mr Yap, who had enlarged his residence by adding containers on top of the original concrete structure. 'No one noticed that my home is a mixture of concrete and container boxes,' he said.
Theoretically, it was safe to put 11 containers on top of each other to form an 11-storey block for residential and commercial purposes, he said. But so far, most refurbished containers that had been used to create restaurants, shopping complexes and houses were three-storeys high.