By Federico Babina #poster
federicobabina.com
The BetaBox mobile prototyping lab is outfitted with a 3D printer, a CNC mill, a laser cutter, and other tools for innovating.
The look of the BetaBox was a collaboration between Nicholas Sailer, BetaVersity's director of creative, who studied industrial design at the College of Design in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Michael Hobgood, an architectural designer and the company's director of operations.
The recycled shipping containers were sourced from the Pacific Port of Caldera in Costa Rica. “Discarded shipping containers are all over the world and cost relatively little,” Saxe says. “With a bit of creativity and understanding of local building techniques, the interiors can be modified for any client.”
Atelier Riri devised a creative way to make living inside a shipping container in Indonesia’s tropical climate both comfortable and economical. The architects layered recycled pine, glass wool, and planter mesh on top of the home to help keep temperatures down.
The 1,668-square-foot three-bedroom home is made of four colorful, crisscrossed containers equipped with a simple ventilation system that facilitates a constant breeze.
Natural light pours into the open-plan house, which is outfitted with low-cost materials like polished concrete floors and recycled metal railings.
The hobby room features a custom desk and shelving system that Atelier Riri designed and manufactured themselves. A custom frame holds the family’s tools and other objects on the eastern wall.
In one of the home’s three bathrooms, a TOTO toilet is illuminated by LED light fixtures from OSRAM. Simple square-shaped skylights and windows allow natural light to fill the space.
A cherry red game room gives way to a second green space on the roof, which can be used as an extension of the indoor space.
Covered with wire mesh, the green roof will continue to vegetate over time.
Because the area is prone to wildfires, the architect and residents were compelled to use special flame retardant materials for the windows and roof.
Opting for IKEA appliances helped rein in the budget, but the home's greatest cost-saving measure may have been Mike's background in construction. His degree in architectural engineering enabled him to play an active role in both the ideation and execution.
In the open-plan kitchen, a garage door can be retracted to take advantage of the balmy California climate and bring the outdoors in. Mike's wife, Shawn, appreciates the home's proximity to hiking trails.
The flooring, doors, and bathroom vanity were sourced from the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore.
The 800-square-foot house is among the first shipping container residences in San Diego County, according to Mike. He hopes it will soon by joined by a larger container home on the property, at which point it will become the guesthouse.
“The owners wanted it to look like a shipping yard that someone had made a restaurant around, in the same way that local artists in the River Arts District have repurposed factory spaces into art studios,” said Project Architect Myles Alexander. The three-story structure lets in light from the highest level, where the bottoms of the containers were removed.
“We wanted it to feel open and spacious,” Alexander said. Much of the work on the containers was completed off-site by SG Blocks, and then delivered for construction. It's clad in Cor-Ten weathering seel.
Other than some use of drywall, the structure is completely made of shipping containers.
Embracing the industrial character of the corrugated steel material, he and Moseley applied the salvaged scraps as decorative siding for the hand-welded staircase.
Two converted shipping containers (left) now house offices for Shoup’s design/build firm. “Perhaps the most successful aspect of turning this into a place to live and an office rather than just have this shop space was moving it towards real indoor-outdoor living,” he says. Taya Shoup, a landscape designer, has refined her husband’s vision for the property with a courtyard and plantings. Photo by building Lab inc.
The 404 is a new boutique hotel and restaurant in Nashville’s rapidly changing Gulch neighborhood. Housed in a former auto shop next to the legendary Station Inn music venue, the small space stands in stark contrast to the new, large developments that have recently sprung up. The restaurant in front is partially housed in a shipping container that both extends the entry up to the sidewalk and acts as a visual focal point on an otherwise subdued exterior. Photo by Caroline Allison.
In his home office, Wardell runs his online art gallery Chester's Blacksmith Shop and researches his next project: opening a boutique hotel in New Zealand. His nephew peeks down from the "napping nook" secreted above the office. The desk is from Room & Board.
Treehouse (Jerusalem, Israel)
Literally a growing structure—two pines grow through porches on either end of the rustic home—this treehouse by Golany Architects provides a stark contrast to the industrial aesthetic often associated with shipping container construction.
Photo by Golany Architects
Shipping Container Home (Brisbane, Australia)
Architect and designer Todd Miller didn’t just use a shipping container for this home—it appears like he used an entire shipping company, since it took 31 containers to build this industrial but inviting home, which features a massive graffiti mural on the back wall.
Photo by ZieglerBuild
In February of 2007, two San Francisco art and travel addicts purchased a 3,200-square-foot former Chinese laundry and tooth-powder factory with column-free interiors and a zigzagging sawtooth roof in lower Pacific Heights. They customized a pair of shipping containers to accommodate their collection and reflect their passions, and hired a local company to sandblast the interior to expose the board-formed concrete walls and replace the carpeted floors with Georgia hickory pecan planks to further lengthen the loft and make it look more like a warehouse.
Two San Francisco art and travel addicts overhauled a loft—and customized a pair of shipping containers—to accommodate their collection and reflect their passions. The shipping containers were stacked, joined with steel tubes, and lashed to reinforced floor joints to make them earthquake-safe.
Transforming shipping containers into habitable spaces is a growingly popular subset of prefab. Just off the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, Martha Moseley and Bill Mathesius adapted an unused concrete foundation to create a home made from 11 stacked shipping containers. "We were inspired by the site, and our desire to have something cool and different," says Moseley.
Mike McConkey, a superintendent for a general contractor, tasked Chris Bittner of OBR Architecture with designing an environmentally sensitive home for he and his wife in San Diego County. Utilizing three shipping containers and a bevy of cost-effective appliances, they managed to limit the budget to $160,000.
Hartman Kable designed the Surfshack to include loads of built-in, fold-down furniture to keep the 160-square-foot container clutter free. Check out this video tour of the project and watch extra closely at about 49 seconds in to see a Dwell cameo.
This modular home prototype by Meka is a shipping container clad in cedar.
Tsai Design Studio turned a shipping container into a classroom located just outside of Cape Town, South Africa.
For an adaptive reuse project in Toronto, Levitt Goodman Architects used a shipping container as a visitors' center.
Maziar Behrooz designed this container studio set amid lush trees.
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