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.
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
Maziar Behrooz designed this container studio set amid lush trees.
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.
Natural light pours into the open-plan house, which is outfitted with low-cost materials like polished concrete floors and recycled metal railings.
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.
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.
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.
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.