Container Home

• 3D Design
• Fall 2012
• Speculative Design Project
• SketchUp Pro

This 2,200 square foot house is not only designed from seven connected shipping containers it also fits on a standard Vancouver city lot of 33′ x 100′ while observing easement and sewer right of ways. It also features a 600 sq/ft. lane-way home and one car garage.

Building your own house has to be the peak of DIY so when the container fad burst onto the scene in the early 2000’s I enthusiastically embraced the concept. I was also disappointed by the unimaginative designs I was seeing with containers stacked up into apartment towers or worse laid out in an open field.

So I set out to design a functional home within the building restrictions of Vancouver construction code. This meant observing front and back yards minimum sizes as well as side easement and sewer/water right of ways.

Another goal was to provide cooling and capture rain water via Kevlar sails stretch laterally over the container tops. The roof sails reflect sunlight and channel rain water toward two cascading waterfalls that drain into an underground grey water storage tank. The tanks store the rain water for use in planters and interior living walls.

I wanted to create a more interesting design than just stacking containers. I staggered the first floor containers parallel with the property boundaries. The second floor units are offset at an angle that breaks up vertical line between the floors and stretches horizontal lines making the house look wide while occupying just 27′ across.

The angled second floor gives opportunity for outside space. The entire second floor is ringed with deck space. The same offset look and deck space is repeated in the 600 square foot lane-way home.