Container Housing: Ghana’s Answer to the Housing Deficit?

The population growth in Ghana has assumed an alarming rate.The provision of urban infrastructure and housing has however not been commensurate with the demand especially in housing, thus the acute housing deficit.The idea of using shipping containers as a building component is by no means new in the Accra Metropolis as most shipping containers are re-constructed architecturally and used for temporary accommodation needs like storage, make-shift shops, emergency shelters and site offices.The concept of using these shipping containers as modular building components in architecture however, is still foreign to building practitioners and the nation at large.This research paper set out to use the containers not for luxury apartments but to harness the merits of availability, low cost of resource, speed of construction and structural stability of the International Standard Organization (ISO) shipping containers in addressing the housing deficiency problem in the nation by meeting the basic need of shelter.Based on the hypothesis of being a cheaper alternative to the concrete and sand-crete blocks, which is the main construction technology used now, similar house types of both technologies were compared to ascertain the variation as part of the methodology for this research.The methodology also included literature reviews and case studies.The scope of this study was limited to 2-bedroom single-storey and multi-storey house types in Accra, the capital city of Ghana.In the final analysis however, this research proved that the container house is not cheaper than the traditional blockwork and concrete construction method is and is better used in temporary accommodation, in situations where time is essential.