Collection by Principal
Shipping Container
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 flooring, doors, and bathroom vanity were sourced from the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 BetaBox mobile prototyping lab is outfitted with a 3D printer, a CNC mill, a laser cutter, and other tools for innovating.
Sliding bamboo panels on the west side of the house can be adjusted to provide shade during the later part of the day.
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.
Studio H:T designed this shipping container home on Nederland, Colorado.
Maziar Behrooz designed this container studio set amid lush trees.
Tsai Design Studio turned a shipping container into a classroom located just outside of Cape Town, South Africa.
This modular home prototype by Meka is a shipping container clad in cedar.
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.
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.
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.
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