main elevation
The culmination of the collaboration was the design’s simplicity: a single neutral, durable, versatile volume that can easily host a changing collection of hobbies, art, furniture, and guests.
The floor is polished concrete, chosen for its durability, low-cost, and minimal maintenance. The red fiberglass armchair is from Modernica.
The coffee table, red Memorex video ball TV, and red Mercer candlestick phone are all thrift store finds. The ceiling fan from Modern Fan Company is contemporary, but matches the retro aesthetic.
The single main room features ample glazing to provide natural light for cultivation of artistic endeavors. In the words of Witt, the “studio is the anchor for the backyard."
The architects worked closely with the clients to match the aesthetic of the vintage furniture they collect. The midcentury modern Danish chair, seen right, has been refurbished and reupholstered.
Exposed Douglas fir is usually prohibitively expensive in larger projects but was far more economical in this case: First Lamp could stain the wood themselves in one afternoon, obviating the need for subcontractors. Another small but impactful detail was the tapering cut of the rafters which gives the studio a more dramatic profile.
Working with a limited budget, First Lamp designed and built one principle architectural flourish: exposed Douglas fir rafters that would weather to a brighter red over the years and accent the white siding.
The studio occupies the corner of a backyard filled with carefully-tended plants. They positioned the studio at the yard’s far corner, diagonal from the main house’s back door, to create a path through the garden that would engage visitors in landscape.
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.
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.
Students at work in the BetaBox on the Duke University campus in 2014.
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.
Because the area is prone to wildfires, the architect and residents were compelled to use special flame retardant materials for the windows and roof.
Covered with wire mesh, the green roof will continue to vegetate over time.
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.
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.
Natural light pours into the open-plan house, which is outfitted with low-cost materials like polished concrete floors and recycled metal railings.
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.
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.
For an adaptive reuse project in Toronto, Levitt Goodman Architects used a shipping container as a visitors' center.
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.
Tsai Design Studio turned a shipping container into a classroom located just outside of Cape Town, South Africa.
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.
Trejos positioned the containers about 60 centimeters above the ground floor, which gives the main gallery and workspace a bit of a sunken feel. The double-level main room offers a spacious interior, perfect for large events and easily altered so it can be utilized as a photo studio for indoor shoots.
Finished in 2013, the 3,660-square-foot Casa Incubo was built from stacking and sliding four shipping containers to create a residence and gallery for photographer Sergio Pucci (who took all the photos of his new home). Set on flat ground, the two-story structure ended up being much easier for architect Maria Jose Trejos to complete than a typically constructed home, saving roughly 20 percent of the cost of a standard concrete block design.
Maziar Behrooz designed this container studio set amid lush trees.