from Survival Research Laboratories

When I was in San Francisco over Spring Break, I met a sculptor named Jim Mason through my friend Chicken John. Jim runs the Shipyard, an alternative energy research and art workshop in Berkeley. They have 27 shipping containers in an 11,000 sq ft outdoor space, and have hosted many large-scale art events and produced many ambitious and spectacular works themselves (the latest is the Neverwas Haul: a three-story steam-powered Victorian mansion that drives. Yes, drives.)

The City of Berkeley gave them a 3-day vacate order on the grounds that nothing is permitted or up to code — but shipping containers are not a building material by the city’s definition, and so they cannot be assessed as safe or unsafe (though common sense is that metal containers are about as safe as you can get for welding, storage etc. — they cannot catch on fire.) While the city is concerned about health and safety — no injuries have happened at the Shipyard, and it’s been open for nearly a decade.

Concerned fans and artists in the Bay Area and all over the country have spoken out and the city is holding an emergency meeting Monday, May 21st to decide the Shipyard’s fate.

Shipping containers have been used as shelter in many ways by architects and laypeople. They are cheap, plentiful, modular, cuttable, stackable.

Urban Space Management, a UK retail developer responsible for the holiday markets across NYC and many other projects, created Container City in 2000 to demonstrate how shipping containers can serve as building blocks, and be used as offices, classrooms, live/work space or retail.

“Smart Codes” are a tool used by cities to adapt codes for historic buildings or other special situations like this one. If a city wants to add density without sprawl, for example, they might allow homeowners to build accessory dwelling units over a garage or in a basement, and bend the existing code.

If you’d like to speak out on behalf of the Shipyard and its population of displaced artists, here’s the contact information of Berkeley officials:
Orth, David dorth@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Joan MacQuarrie JMacQuarrie@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Mark Rhoades MRhoades@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Phil Kamlarz pkamlarz@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Manuela Albuquerque malbuquerque@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Deborah Pryor dpryor@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Dan Marks dmarks@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Nabil Al-Hadithy nalhadithy@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Zach Cowan zcowan@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Laura McKinney lmckinney@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Michael Caplan mcaplan@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Jim Hynes jhynes@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Gregory Daniel gdaniel@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Malcolm Prince mprince@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Greg Powell gpowell@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Maurice Norrise mnorrise@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Greg Heidenreich gheidenreich@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Mayor Tom Bates mayor@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Linda Maio lmaio@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Darryl Moore dmoore@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Maxwell Anderson manderson@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Dona Spring spring@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Laurie Capitelli lcapitelli@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Betty Olds olds@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Kriss Worthington kworthington@ci.berkeley.ca.us
Gordon Wozniak GWozniak@ci.berkeley.ca.us
clerk@ci.berkeley.ca.us

Laughing Squid’s take