Eco Container Home | Shipping Container Homes, Container Home Design, Container Architecture Ideas and More

Port-a-Bach. A Shipping Container Holiday Home. New Plymouth, New Zealand.

Editor — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 01:42:55 +0000

Port-a-Bach. A Shipping Container Holiday Home. New Plymouth, New Zealand.

The Kiwi Bach (or in New Zealand a small holiday home) has been reinvented by the Architects Bonnifait + Giesen and Atelierworkshop. This prototype Shipping Container Home was manufactured in Hangzhou China and shipped to New Zealand where it is now a part of the permanent collection at the Puke Ariki Museum, New Plymouth.

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Although this shipping container home was not re-cycled, Atelierworkshop believes that up-cycling containers can be an effective answer for large scale projects if portability, site access, robustness, security are issues. The Port-a-Bach is not in commercial production – however one could assume that they would like to be – as they are seeking appropriate commercial partners in order to mass produce it and its eco friendly add ons such as wind turbines and solar solutions.

The Port-a-Bach can be readily transported and installed with a minimal amount of impact on any site. It can be folded into a fully-enclosed exterior steel shell to be stored or secured or relocated. Features include cupboards and shelving, stainless steel fittings, and kitchen appliances. The bathroom has an open shower, a sink, and a composting toilet. A fabric screen system for the interior of the structure provides for the option of creating room divisions on-the-fly, and an exterior canvas can be used to cover a deck area to expand the living space outdoors.

We like the Port-a-Bach’s style. It is reminiscent of Sean Goodsell’s Future Shack an emergency response housing solution that originally captivated our collective imaginations. Port-a-Bach however looks to be a whole lot more comfortable!

Notes From The Designers:

A HOLIDAY HOME
- portable,
- secure,
- high-level finish,
- designed to be environmentally clean
- comparatively inexpensive,
- comfortably sleeps two adults and two children.

THAT ALLOWS :
- transportation,
- immediate, flexible and long-term solution that enables you to use your land without investing in a permanent property commitment,
- for future development, ideal for leased land situations,
- to be power, water and sewer independent, it is well suited to remote or non-service supplied land,
- also be connected to available services,
- quick and easy transportation (via truck or helicopter) and installation to any orientation with minimal impact on site,
- unfolding to create a living space and refolding to create a secure unit for in situ storage or relocation.

FEATURES
- fully enclosed exterior steel shell (when folded up),
- appointed with large internal storage cupboards and shelves / stainless steel kitchen and fittings / bathroom with open shower, sink, composting toilet,
- interior fabric screen system gives the versatility of creating rooms within the large open living space : includes bunk beds, double bed room, dressing room, kitchen and bathroom,
- exterior canvas screen system allows to shelter the deck area for comfortable indoor/outdoor flow and living,
- 6 concrete footings form a stable, non-invasive ‘foundation’, allowing you to situate the unit on a wide range of ground conditions.

Courtesy Of: Bonnifait + Giesen. Atelierworkshop

Photos: Paul McCredie.

Eco Container Home | Shipping Container Homes, Container Home Design, Container Architecture Ideas and More - Shipping Container Home Designs, Container Home Plans, Articles, Ideas and More | Eco Container Home

Containers of Hope, San Hose, Cost Rica.

Editor — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:44:30 +0000

Containers of Hope, San Hose, Cost Rica.

Benjamin García Saxe Architecture clients’ Gabriela Calvo and Marco Peralta dreamed of living harmoniously and debt free on their property 20 minutes outside of the city of San Jose, Costa Rica. They made the choice to exploring the possibility of creating a very inexpensive house made out of recycled shipping containers that allowed them to be unburdened by finance, and to live the life they had always wanted.

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Constructed in 2011 from just 2 shipping containers, this striking modernist re-purposed shipping container home is 100m2 in size and cost USD $40,000 to complete.

A roof between the two containers, made from the scrap pieces of metal taken to make the windows, not only creates an internal sensation of openness but also provides a cross ventilation which is sufficient enough to not to have to use air conditioning.

Courtesy Of: Arch Daily, Benjamin Garcia Saxe
Photos: © Andres Garcia Lachner

The New Jerusalem Shipping Container Children’s Home. Midrand, South Africa.

Editor — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:06:41 +0000

The New Jerusalem Shipping Container Children’s Home. Midrand, South Africa.

The New Jerusalem Shipping Container Children’s Home provides residential care for abandoned, abused, traumatised, orphaned or HIV-Positive children and vulnerable youth from 0-18 years. Founded in 2000 by Anna and Phina Mojapelo, the two sisters started the project with just one child. The new shipping container facilities include nurseries, dormitories, a communal kitchen and dining area, a crèche, a Montessori preschool, play area, and a permaculture vegetable garden. Today, they shelter over 80 children at a time. You can donate to this valuable project here.

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Sean Wall from 4D and A Architects worked closely with New Jerusalem to propose a range of housing solutions for the accommodation of twelve children and one house-mother per abode, two houses sharing communal kitchen, dining, lounge and laundry facilities. After considering various alternatives, it was decided that the most lucrative approach was to utilise recycled shipping containers to construct these residential dwellings as the cost was estimated at R1.5million (€145,000) – 25% of the traditional brick and mortar home.

Courtesy Of: The New Jerusalem Children’s Home Four Design + Architecture

The Very Green Six Recycled Shipping Container Home, Flagstaff, AZ, USA.

Editor — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:59:42 +0000

The Very Green Six Recycled Shipping Container Home, Flagstaff, AZ, USA.

Designed under the guidance of Ecosa Design Studio, this recycled shipping container home in Flagstaff, Arizona, is constructed from six shipping containers, and has very green credentials. The 2,000-square-foot single family residence includes 2 lofted sleeping areas, 2 baths, an office, studio, storage room, and a small green house.

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Completed March 2011, this house was oriented due south for direct solar exposure as well as a better fit on the narrow urban infill lot. Because this area is a designated flood plain, federal regulations required that the house be 3 1/2 feet above ground level. The foundation consists of forty concrete piers. The containers were purchased and partially fabricated in Phoenix, then shipped to Flagstaff on trailers, lifted with cranes onto the piers, and welded in place.

The interior is furred with steel lumber in the walls and wood lumber in the ceilings. Plumbing and electric are inside the furred walls just like traditional construction.

Inside, the walls and floor are insulated with closed-cell foam, and the ceilings with recycled denim, providing R values of 20-24. The exterior is coated withSuperTherm ceramic coating, which reflects heat and cold, helps prevent condensation, and provides a durable custom-color finish. The roofs were sprayed with foam and covered with an impermeable membrane and sand finish. The windows and glass doors are thermally broken aluminum dual pane. Kalwall insulated fiberglass walls allow additional daylight into the main atrium space.

The upper story collects both water and solar power for residential use.

A water harvesting system, designed by TBKA Landscape Architects and installed by Northern Arizona Pump, employs gutters on the upper story to direct water into two large tanks and can be pumped to landscape areas. The rest of the water from the site, including the lower roofs, is directed via the grading plan to landscaping areas, which will feature indigenous, low water use plantings. Planting areas are defined by recycled broken concrete or urbanite, collected from this and other neighborhood construction sites.

A 3.6 kW on-grid solar system designed and installed by AEA Inc. is expected to meet the household’s total electric needs.

This very green container home also received an award from the Coconino County Sustainable Building Program in 2010.

Courtesy Of: Container House Flagstaff

The Atlanta Shipping Container House 2.0 USA.

Editor — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:48:57 +0000

The Atlanta Shipping Container House 2.0 USA.

Architect Francis Kirkpatrick and Engineer George Runkle collaborated to design two of these shipping container homes in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. The original shipping container home (colored brown) was constructed by g a d Design, and was started in 2006, while the newer addition (colored white) was completed 2011.

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The second container home has a slightly altered design when compared to the original home. The second container home now has a balcony on the top floor, and the top floor now has a completely open floor plan.

Courtesy Of: Runkle Consulting.

Holyoke Cabin. An Off Grid Shipping Container Home, Duluth, Minnesota, USA.

Editor — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 15:00:27 +0000

Holyoke Cabin. An Off Grid Shipping Container Home, Duluth, Minnesota, USA.

The Holyoke Cabin shipping container home was a collaboration of Paul Stankey (co-founder of hiveModular), his brother Scott Stankey and their wives. Located outside of Duluth, Minnesota, this 480 square foot eco container home cost just a little over USD $15,000 to complete.

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During 2008, two twenty foot shipping containers were purchased for $800 each, and were designed to create an eco container home – complete with kitchen, dining room, living room with a wood burning stove, a laundry room and two queen beds. The shipping containers were welded to the top of twelve concrete piers, minimizing its impact on the site, which is sufficiently remote that the concrete for the footings had to be mixed by hand, and the water hauled up from the nearby creek.

The two containers are connected by a middle section loft, and roof made out of “(3) 4 1/2″ X 11 1/4″ fir beams made up of (3) 2X12′s thru bolted and glued” and a glass door entrance. The interiors are now furred out and insulated with rigid foam clad with birch ply. The cabin is partially powered by solar power arrays and connected to a rainwater cistern making this building an off grid eco container home.

Courtesy Of: http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/

The DeWitt and Kasravi Shipping Container Home, Santa Cruz, USA.

Editor — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 15:43:03 +0000

The DeWitt and Kasravi Shipping Container Home, Santa Cruz, USA.

Located in the hills of Felton, Santa Cruz, CA this 1,200 square foot shipping container home sited on 10.8 acres was recently completed on the side of a moutain. Owned by Connie DeWitt and her husband Kam Kasravi, this house is formed by three and a half “high cube” shipping containers — 9 feet tall, 40 feet long and 8 feet wide.

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Four shipping containers were sourced through the Port of Oakland, and were bought for a total of $15,000. The containers were partially prefabricated off site with windows and doors installed before transport. In order to move them to site, the shipping containers also had to be cut into six sections of varying lengths to form the rooms – with no section could be longer than 30 feet, otherwise the trucks could not have moved them safely.

While the cost of the shipping containers was less than traditional wood-framed house materials, this saving was offsett by an intense schedule of fire-protection measures and other requirements for building in the mountains. This meant the total cost — about $408,000 — was not much less than if they’d built a conventional house.

Designed by Modulus Architecture and built by SG Blocks and Norcal Construction, this 1,200-square-foot, two-story container home has one full bedroom, a sleeping nook with bunk beds, 1½ bathrooms and an additional outdoor shower. A central skylight upstairs allows light to pour in, and a metal grate in the floor of that upper level brings extra light to the first floor. Inside, the steps and the wood railings were milled by the family from a 150-foot redwood tree that had to be cut down on the property to allow turn-around space for emergency vehicles.

Courtesy Of: Mercury News

Photos: Karen T. Borchers

The Shipping Container Home by Studio:HT, Colorado, USA.

Editor — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 14:14:54 +0000

The Shipping Container Home by Studio:HT, Colorado, USA.

We adore this 1,157 sq foot container home designed by Studio:HT Architects. Located in Nederland, Colorado, this inspiring shipping container house was completed in May 2010. It was also the recipient of a AIA Colorado Citation Award.

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AIA Colorado Citation Award

This project questions the need for excessive space and challenges occupants to be efficient. Two shipping containers saddlebag a taller common space that connects local rock outcroppings to the expansive mountain ridge views. The containers house sleeping and work functions while the center space provides entry, dining, living and a loft above. The loft deck invites easy camping as the platform bed rolls between interior and exterior. The project is planned to be off-the-grid using solar orientation, passive cooling, green roofs, pellet stove heating and photovoltaics to create electricity.

Courtesy Of: Studio:HT
Photographs: Braden Gunem

The Daiken-Met Architects Shipping Container Office, Gifu City, Japan.

Editor — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:26:19 +0000

The Daiken-Met Architects Shipping Container Office, Gifu City, Japan.

We particularly likes the idea behind these progressive architects shipping container offices in Gifu City, Japan. With a building foot-print of just 49.3m2 and total office area of 111.35m2, this shipping container office is designed to be mobile. That’s right mobile.

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Completed in 2011 by Nakamura Construction and designed by Waken not Jim, these seven shipping containers are supported with in a mobile steel frame structure. The goal of course, being to being able to relocate the entire office structure if so desired. We have seen use of the supporting steel structure before, most notable in Cattani Architects Cité A Docks student housing project, located in Le Havre, France, however this is certainly the first time we have seen it on wheels.

Whether the mobility of this structure is a truly practical option or not, it does pose and interesting opportunity for the future use of urban vacant land.

Courtesy Of: netmet.jp
Photgraphy: Shinkenchiku-Sha

Tim Palen Studio at Shadow Mountain, Mojave Desert, USA.

Editor — Sun, 27 May 2012 17:17:30 +0000

Tim Palen Studio at Shadow Mountain, Mojave Desert, USA.

A prototype hybrid house, also known as the Tim Palen Studio at Shadow Mountain is the first repurposed container home permitted and built in the Mojave Desert. This residence combines the energy and production efficiencies of diverse pre-engineered building and energy systems working together seamlessly to produce a smooth-running hybrid “green machine for living.”

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The residence is a prototype of 2^nd generation pre-fab design and a kit-like housing product developed by ecotechbuild, the design-build subsidiary of ecotechdesign. It is constructed from 5-20′ long recycled cargo containers that were fabricated and finished in Los Angeles and then shipped to the site where they were erected and stacked 2 high in 15 minutes each. All site work, including foundations and utility placement was constructed at the remote desert site during container fabrication in Los Angeles.

The residence is the 1 bedroom, 1-1/2 bath, 2 story model hybridhouse_1 design that has been adapted for a media client who required a separate photo studio and storage building. The studio is constructed of a Butler pre-engineered steel building with plug-in cargo container storage. It is naturally daylite with 22″ dia. Solutubes, which can be manually controlled and temperature balanced using efficient, dimmable strip lighting.

The container residence and the pre-engineered, steel studio structure act as two bookends that support framing and, in turn a perforated metal shade canopy that wraps the container’s roof, south-facing steel walls and the dramatic 20′ high outside living space, aka solar breezeway to provide protection against desert heat, glare, wind and blowing sand. The breezeway, in turn moderates and then directs a flow of air through the container spaces to enhance passive cooling. A naturally lit, steel-clad stair structure connects the 2 level stacked containers and doubles as a 20′ story high photo gallery in which to display artwork.

Other unique features include:

Hybrid House Design: based on the efficient Prius engineering concept, the hybrid house concept combines diverse, pre-engineered building and energy conservation features to maximize efficiency and cost savings, while offering architectural design flexibility and variation.
All Recycled Steel Construction: the project is composed of diverse components, including: (6) repurposed ISO cargo containers, a Butler pre-engineered building, a 10,000 gal. storage tank, at solar shade canopy and an integrated steel framing system that provides extraordinary strength, earthquake, fire and wind protections, as well as large window and door openings to maximize natural daylighting, ventilation and cooling.
Solar Home Shading System: a bolt-on, adjustable steel frame and perforated metal shade system creates 50% solar heat, glare and wind reduction on the building and solar breezeway and allows for the plug-in attachment of future solar electric and water heating panel arrays.
Living Roof System: movable, bolt and add-on modules use greywater irrigation and are planted with native desert plants and sedums to absorb heat, glare, dust and CO2.
Water Conservation: integrated greywater for irrigation, water harvesting and storage systems.
Energy Conservation: an innovative steel framework allows for the placement of a “cool roof” and insulation system and a triple wall insulation system combine to create a building envelope that exceeds California energy code requirements by 50%. All appliances, fixtures and heating systems are Energy Star rated.

The Tim Palen Studio was built for about $200 per square foot, including the foundation, according to an email from a representative for the architect. Ecotechdesign intends to design and build more container projects in the price range of about $150-250 per square foot, depending on the site and other options.

Courtesy Of: ecotechdesign