LONDON, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Shipping containers made in China have been used to create a village-in-the-sky for hundreds of students in Scotland.
The seven-storey development on the banks of the famous River Clyde in Glasgow is transforming an old industrial site into what will become a thriving community, helping to provide living space for an ever increasing student population.
The 500 metal containers were shipped by sea from China to Southampton on England's south coast, and shipped by road to Scotland where they are being stacked like a giant Lego building site.
Each container is being fitted out to a high specification to provide high quality accommodation for student residents.
As well as apartments for students, the community will also provide a karaoke room, a cinema and a helter-skelter slide between each of the floors.
Marc Carter, managing director of student accommodation provider, True Student, said: "A very large 500-tonne mobile crane was used to load the containers on to the site much like we would have loaded Lego when we were small."
"It is a little more technical than that, but it is essentially a Lego system of construction and we can go up to 15 storeys tall," Carter said.
Carter agrees some local people may be "perplexed" by the size of a site suddenly becoming home to 500 blue shipping containers, adding "It looks like a port."
Once the work is finished, added Carter, people won't recognize it as a shipping container system. The outside will be clad and it will then look like any other modern building, and perform in the same way.
Stephen Good, from the Construction Scotland Innovation Center, said that off-site construction allows multi-skilled technicians to assemble buildings as opposed to on-site tradesman battling against changing weather patterns, adding there is huge potential in Britain for such schemes.
The new student village will be completed in time for the start in the fall of the new academic year.
