CREJ - Journal

36 / 112

36 / BUILDING DIALOGUE / MARCH 2015
O ur Shipping Container building at 2500
Larimer St. in Denver is one of our more
interesting projects. The concept of re-pur-
posing shipping containers is far from novel, but
using 29 containers to create an infill mixed-use
development was somewhat pioneering for our
team at Gravitas.
We were interested in exploring a shipping con-
tainer building specifically for a parcel of land we
had in Denver’s emerging River North neighbor-
hood. The neighborhood has industrial roots, but has
recently become fertile
ground for established
and emerging arts and
artists, as well as start-ups
and creative businesses. A
mixed-use building made
entirely of shipping con-
tainers seemed the perfect
complement to RiNo’s mix of
art and utility.
To begin exploring the
concept, we looked to a few
successful container projects
in London and New Zealand
for inspiration, but we quickly
learned that Instagram photos
and articles in The Telegraph
could only take us so far. Lucky for
us, our general contractor, Sprung
Construction, had a large lot a few
blocks north of our site in RiNo that
would serve as our concept testing
ground.
For the first-generation model, we
built a two-story office space. The lay-
out was simple: We placed two 8-by-
40-foot containers side by side, and
mirrored that layout directly on top of
these two ground-level containers (just
as you would see them stacked on a car-
go ship). In order to see how efficiently
we could build a habitable office space
out of these containers, we tested a litany
of variables that would impact its success.
This included everything from wall insu-
lation (spray foam vs. batt), roof insulation
(interior vs. exterior), heating and cooling
(electric vs. forced air), drips and leaks, to
metal expansion and contraction, floor treat-
ment, the smells the containers emit when
they heat up, what size openings we could cut
in the container walls before they needed to be
structurally reinforced, and more. After observ-
ing how this double-decker office space fared
throughout winter, spring and summer, we used
our education from the various tests to proceed
with a more formalized set of plans.
While the field research proved valuable, the
project we envisioned was vastly different from
the four dented containers with small windows and
limited interior openings that we had just built. While
this first generation was beautiful in its simplicity and
efficiency, we were interested in creating a dynamic
mixed-use project, which added to the cost and com-
plexity. We stacked and oriented the containers with
micro retail and office space in mind, along with open
floor plans that would appeal to a variety of business-
es. Playing with Legos proved to be a more effective
resource than AutoCAD during the design develop-
ment phase, and through that, we ultimately honed
Ryan Diggins
Partner,
Gravitas
Development
Group
TRENDS in Adaptive Reuse
John Gibbons
Completed exterior of 2500 Larimer St.