CONTAINER KITCHEN GREEN BUILDING INSTALL

The brief for this project was to create a green building for the FREIND Farm Animal Sanctuary in East Peckham. The patrons, Mark and Mandy, needed some sort of small eco building as a replacement for the tent that served as a make-shift kitchen during the summer months. The sanctuary was open all year round, which meant they lacked the ability to provide warm food and drinks for visitors regardless of the weather. 

As sustainable builders Rook & Castle have a holistic approach and wanted to help the sanctuary that not only protects animals but educates future generations on how to live in harmony with the planet. To this end, we donated sustainable building materials and our time to the value of £50,000. With the help of the metal fabricators at Littlehampton Welding, we transformed a tired old shipping container into an amazing little green building that serves as the sanctuary’s first proper kitchen and coffee shop. 

Being a green building the remodelled container has been built with its impact on the environment in mind using green building materials and eco friendly products. It has high performance Internorm windows with doors from ecoHaus. To help keep the building cooler in summer and warmer in winter we installed eco friendly insulation made from volcanic ash and timber from sustainable sources. The internal finish is a modern and hard wearing OSB board which is formed out of compressed layers of wood strands (the timber comes from faster growing trees than plywood so it is ideal for use in eco friendly buildings). The kitchen units are in a contrasting dark grey, and energy efficient led lighting was used throughout the interior.  

It’s very important for a green building to fit sympathetically into its environment and work within the nature that surrounds it. So we oriented the shipping container and additional decking area around four elderflower trees that were already established. This means that in the summer people using the decking can benefit from their shade while taking a break. To further root the new eco building in its environment we created a covered terrace at one end of the container that offers another view out over the sanctuary.

We would like to thank Neil Fry and his team at Littlehampton Welding for their expertise in this eco friendly buildings project. It’s our heartfelt intention that our contribution to the FRIEND Farm Animal Sanctuary will help them to rescue more animals and keep operating well into the future.