Ground work is underway to build a space-age business complex from recycled shipping containers in the centre of Wycombe.

The DesBox development on the old Baker Street car park is part of the council’s Desborough Area Renewal and Enterprise (DARE) initiative.

By opting to build 52 studios, workshops and offices from 135 recycled shipping containers, the council will live up to its Dare to be Different hype for the regeneration of the west side of town.

The kudos is likely to resonate a lot further than Wycombe or even distant parts of Bucks.

The town will be among the first places in the world to use the innovative system of modular building technology marketed with the Container City trademark.

The development is scheduled to open for business next February next door to the new Aldi store in Baker Street, the first completed part of the regeneration scheme.

The three-storey business complex will include meeting rooms, storage rooms of different sizes and a ground floor café as well as the workspaces geared to meet the need of start-up companies and small enterprises for somewhere to operate away from the domestic environment to give them lift-off to wider markets.

A council spokeswoman reported on Monday: “The modules for DesBox are currently being made in Suffolk. These will be delivered to the site over the next three months in three phases so you will be able to see the building take shape as part of the Desborough landscape.

“With its innovative and distinctive design, it will make a bold statement. Its quirky nature will suit artists, craftsmen and all kinds of small to medium sized companies.”

The construction process re-uses sheets of high strength pre-fabricated steel taken from redundant 40ft shipping containers.

The modules are designed to be linked together to create a kaleidoscope of different shaped buildings to match whatever the client wants.

According to the company’s website, construction time can be reduced by up to half compared with traditional techniques, minimising site disruption.

The system has been successfully used to build classrooms, sports halls, nurseries, community centres, artists’ studios, shops, live/work space, sound recording studios and offices.

The method has been widely used in London’s Docklands.

The company responsible for the enterprise - Urban Space Management - is based at Trinity Buoy Wharf in an office recycled from the 2012 Olympic broadcasting studios built from clapped-out shipping containers.

In the wider world there are Container City developments in Las Vegas, Dubai and Christchurch in New Zealand but the concept still has some way to go for wide scale take-up in the UK outside London.

Locally-based commercial agent Chandler Garvey has been appointed managing agent with responsibility for lettings at DesBox.

The company has been given the remit by the council to offer the units on an “easy-in/easy-out” basis in the hope that short term leases will encourage start-up companies to take the plunge and clear the business off the kitchen table.

The marketing launch of the DesBox venture coincides with a plea to the government and the building industry from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) to think of materials other than bricks and boost diversity in construction skills.

A paper written by the surveyors on Modern Methods of Construction analyses the benefits of embracing off-site modular housing and recommends incentives to encourage builders to take up alternative methods particularly for house building in view of the government’s ambitious target of 300,000 new homes a year.

For details of the units available on short leases at DesBox, contact Jack Kempster on 01494 446612.