Education-In-A-Box Shipping Containers as Prefab Building Material for Public School

Ruiz, Christopher Bryan O. Institute of Architecture & Fine Arts Far Eastern University ABSTRACT The Department of Education, as mandated by the 1987 Philippine Constitution, receives the highest part of the National Budget annually. 40% of this budget is used for educational infrastructure, which includes the construction and repair of public schools (Menardus 2003). Despite having the major part of the budget however, there is still a considerable lack of educational infrastructure to achieve an ideal learning environment. Moreover, the government lacks a program which will standardize the building of public schools, thus resulting to a "kaleidoscope" of building forms, and difficulty in rating its particular efficiency (Senate 2011). This condition worsens the already complicated process of constructing public educational structures that needs to consider costs, logistics and mobility. With the shortage of almost 150,000 classrooms (Diaz 2011) and the growing rate of population, it is imperative to find a cheap, effective and rapid response to address this dilemma and ensure that the solution can easily be replicated throughout the country. The proposal explores the feasibility that shipping containers can be used as an alternative building module and component for public school construction in the Philippines. As compared to traditional means of construction, prefab containers are cheaper, faster to build, and easier to transport (Smith 2006). Keywords: shipping container, prefab building material, educational infrastructure, standardized public school construction

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