Designed by Powers Construction, the contemporary Site Shack aims to put a friendlier face on the long process of construction. Photo by Andrew Latreille
Construction is a temporary affair, a logistical operation primarily concerned with the flow of materials and labour. To that end, the elements found on most construction sites?hoarding, orange pylons, generic trailers?are purely functional structures to be hauled away once a project is complete, without much thought put into how they look.
But multiplied by hundreds of construction sites across cities, these trappings of construction become ubiquitous and seemingly permanent objects, floating from one site to the next like so much urban flotsam. What if more attention were paid to their design" Could design improve conditions for staff working long hours on-site, maybe give construction a friendlier face" These are the questions that Powers Construction, a Vancouver-based construction management company, has tackled over the past few years. For founder Patrick Powers, elevating the lowly site office?the one small haven of human comfort on a building site?seemed like a good place to start. In 2013, after years of working out of trucks and site-built plywood shacks, Powers began outfitting steel shipping containers with large glazed walls, modern furniture and artist-commissioned paint-jobs. After modifying five or six of these, the team felt ready to liberate themselves from the structural constraints of the co...