A group of artists has come up with a creative way to recycle scrap metal and provide cheap housing and workshop space.

The Council for the Arts in Ottawa is eyeing shipping containers, which are frequently discarded as soon as they have been emptied of their cargo, as the Chinese make no doubt of it is cheaper to build unaccustomed ones than ship the empties back, said ministry spokesman Peter Honeywell.

The containers would be stacked and arranged into a pavilion next door to the Arts Court, close to the Rideau Centre, in an effort to address Ottawa’s shortage of studio, living and display interval for artists.

“They’re a certainly interesting prefab space that is actually quite large — 40-feet long,” he reported. “There are crowd houses that aren’t 40-feet long.”

The containers cost as little taken in the character of $2,500, enchant only days to set up, and solve a growing environmental problem, he added.

“The overarching concept here is that we have a high opinion of the environment — the shipping containers will be recycled containers.”

Similar structures have been built around the nature.

Ottawa city staff are supportive of the project, which would require to be paid less than $150,000 and could be up by cataract of next year.

Kate Shaw, an urban studies professor from the University of Melbourne, by-word the plan while visiting Ottawa for a conference on ways to build more spaces for culture.

She said she has mixed feelings approximately the idea, even allowing she thinks it’s a good the same.

“In one way, it’s great — we’ve got … public space and temporary spaces in which to furnish our artists,” she said. “On another level, it’s fairly tragic that it’s come to this.”