The two ends of the containers can be opened or closed at this pivot for more or less privacy. Native plants will grow on the roof and northside of the structure.
One of the main draws of Kevin Freeman and Jen Feldmann’s house is its connection to the neighborhood, which is why the front porch was a must. “Homes that have a door but no outside space say, ‘I’m not interested in you,’” designer Christopher Robertson explains. “This says, ‘I’m here to be part of the community.’”
A small shipping container home in New Plymouth, New Zealand, features a retractable porch.
The couple connected several of the shipping containers, hollowing out the sides to form large, open living areas. “I’ve always been a loft guy,” says Mathesius.
CLA uses the proliferating idea of modified shipping containers, but builds upon and augments the standard 40’ x 8’ x 8’-6” for modular emergency housing. Pre-assembled sliding technology from the RV industry maximizes unit size and flexibility
The sleek 320-square-foot MEKA home, designed by Jason Halter and Christos Marcopoulous, when it was set up in New York. The home is made of cedar paneling, set over a steel shipping container.
The guest quarters in the shipping container behind the main house is one of the Freeman's favorite places. "We just haven't figured out how to use it yet," he says. When Eli was younger and woke up earlier, either Freeman or Feldman would take him back here to play without waking the other parent. Now, it is predominantly used by out-of-town visitors and when the couple's parents come to stay. "The main house is such a social space that I worry about being misinterpreted as antisocial if I go to the guest quarters," Freeman says.
Freeman and Feldmann's two dogs, Arnold and Ruti (short for Rutabaga), have claimed their territory as the space between the ground and the bottom of the 20-foot-long container that houses the kitchen. "The dogs like to go under there, because it's a two-foot-high space that is shaded and gets a nice breeze," Feldmann says. "When we were landscaping, we had to make sure to leave a path for the puppies so they could get to that spot."
Shoup built a connector between the shipping containers and covered it with salvaged redwood. Glass panels from old sliding doors offer ample illumination in the workspaces. Photo by Muffy Kibbey.
The term “resourcefulness” may embody just what Ex-Container aims to provide for families in need: this project takes structures from ISO shipping containers and restructures them into stackable houses.
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.
Moseley notes the home’s distinctive staircase as one of her favorite features. "When the steel was ordered from the steelyard," she says, "it was marked with our metalworker’s name, for easy pickup. That scribble still exists in random places in the staircase and is very industrial—we love it!" Hand-welded by Mike Carman, a local contractor, the staircase runs through all three floors, and it was custom-sized to fit the dimensions of the shipping containers, measuring nine-feet-six-inches tall and eight-feet wide.
CG Architectes stacks two containers perpendicularly for this Brittany, France, house.
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.
Sliding bamboo panels on the west side of the house can be adjusted to provide shade during the later part of the day.
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.
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