When the pandemic hit Delhi in 2020, Merrie and Kundan Bhullar left the city for a patch of land they owned in the Aravalli hills near Gurgaon, a satellite town in the capital region. They had just installed electricity on-site, and they lived for the next year in a one-room shelter without a kitchen as they planned their next move.

Ultimately, they decided to ask Shobhit Kumar of Rakhee Shobhit Design Associates (RSDA) to design two shipping container homes shaded with thatch awnings—one for them, and one for Kundan’s mother, Daljit Kaur. The homes would enable them to live as a joint family in one compound, with a garden in between. “We wanted to live separately, but together,” Merrie says.

Shipping containers—and their alternative uses—had attracted Merrie and Kundan for years. As designers and manufacturers of textiles and furniture, they had filled countless containers with goods destined for Urban Outfitters, Anthropology, and Free People stores. They had also encountered container-built textile workshops and mobile cafes in their wide-ranging travels to source materials, patterns, and manufacturers for their products. Container houses could also be built relatively quickly, with minimal site impact, at a time when skilled labor was scarce.

As the couple lived on the land, they got to know their neighbors—shepherds, gardeners, and dairy farmers with whom they shared the jungle village. “For people who come from the city, the jungle is an unknown—it was really cool that we could spend the pandemic getting to know the place,” Merrie says.

Kumar paid Merrie and Kundan a visit to familiarize himself with the place and develop a site plan. “We spent a lot of time planning the location of the containers, down to the last angle,” Kumar says. “It was beautiful to stand on the site and see what you’re going to see when you wake up—all of the angles of the ridge behind you. That’s when the entire project took shape.”

The floors are vitrified tile with a matte finish and concrete color, set atop a thermal layer of extruded polypropylene." layout="wide" credit="Fanthome | Naughts & Crosses" photoUserId=""/>

As you enter the property, the houses are hidden from the road. Then, as a clearing opens in the jungle, the containers appear, eminently contemporary except for the traditional thatch structures providing shade overhead, with the peaks of the Aravelli mountains and the skyscrapers of Gurgaon beyond.

“When you’re looking at a container, even if it is for a commercial purpose, it is a very modern structure,” says Kumar. “To add that vernacularity to it is fabulous.”

Indian craftspeople fabricated the Scandinavian-style carpentry, built-ins, and kitchen islands, which are modeled after high-end European stainless-steel cabinetry. “Our aim was to make the entire project 100-percent Indian,” Kundan says. “We should not be importing stuff from Germany, or Italy, or other places.”

The furnishings are largely designed by the Bhullars themselves, adorned with colorful fabrics they accumulated while traveling through places like Morocco and Thailand.

“We’re all happy, and we’re not bumping up against each other,” says Merrie. “We walk across the garden to visit each other—it’s like we’re both staying at the same resort.”

The completed project strikes a balance between contemporary and vernacular design and immerses the family in the landscape without being too obtrusive. “We don’t have paintings on the wall, because how can you beat the view,” Merrie says. “It’s just so green—you open those huge doors, and it’s like living in a treehouse.”

Related Reading:

The Essential Guide to Shipping Container Home Design

The Dos and Don’ts of Shipping Container Homes

A Shipping Container Home Rises on a Rocky Site Outside Stockholm

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Rakhee Shobhit Design Associates (RSDA) / @rsda.in

Builder: Macrocosm / Swaroop Creations

Structural Engineer: Designs Structomech

Civil Engineer: Rajendra Yadav / Macrocosm

Landscape Design: Hazel Earth

Lighting Design: R.S.D.A. / Philips India

Cabinetry Design/ Homz by Khandelwal

Carpentry: Kishan Verma

Windows: Asahi, AIS Glasxperts Sales & Services Ltd

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A Pair of Shipping Container Homes Trace the Edges of a Nature Preserve in India