The bedroom’s vertical, floor-to-ceiling window lets occupants admire the graceful trees outside. A Mini Tolomeo lamp by Artemide sits on the bedside table.
The home’s lower level serves as a garage, allowing direct access to the house.
Garage Plan
A Outdoor Shower
B Bookshelf-Bar
C Original Walls
D Wood Stove
A Renlita Floataway garage door is shielded by one of the home’s many overhangs.
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.
This modular home prototype by Meka is a shipping container clad in cedar.
Maziar Behrooz designed this container studio set amid lush trees.
Studio H:T designed this shipping container home on Nederland, Colorado.
The home was built by two construction workers and the couple themselves, who were familiarized with the construction process and had backgrounds in industrial engineering. “We did not have blueprints for this design, and created only a 3-D model to guile them along the way,” Saxe says.
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.”
Covered with wire mesh, the green roof will continue to vegetate over time.