When Connie DeWitt and her husband Kam Kasavri began designing a weekend getaway house in the quiet woods of Zayante, they knew what they wanted: high style, low impact on the earth and a minimal cash outlay. Two years later, their modern cabin is taking form as the very first home in Santa Cruz County to be constructed out of shipping containers.
Those would be the same shipping containers that our cell phones, wines, electronics, furniture, clothing and everything else get packed in for transport across the high seas. The standard steel boxes—8 feet wide, 8.5 feet tall and either 20 or 40 feet long—revolutionized international trade back in the 1970s, cutting the loading and unloading process from several days to several hours and the cost by 90 percent.
Over the last two decades, though, shipping containers have begun piling up in shipyards all over the globe—especially in countries that import far more than they export, like the U.S., where the number of surplus containers in shipyards peaked around 1 million in 2005. It was about that time that people began building with them, initially for storage and office space and eventually for housing.
“The shipping container itself is basically the strongest structural module ever built,” says David Fenster of Modulus Architects, who worked on the project.
Indeed, anything built to withstand 20 years stacked 10 high on cargo ships (the amount of time shipping containers are deemed “seaworthy”) is going to be durable, to say the least.
“Besides the uniqueness and being green it has a lot of benefits, too,” says DeWitt, standing against an exposed shipping container wall in her soon-to-be upstairs bedroom. “I don’t have to worry about the wood rotting out from under the house.”
Like all shipping containers, the three and a half containers DeWitt and Kasavri purchased from the Port of Oakland are made from Corten steel— the strongest steel in the world, which also happens to be resistant to rust, mold and fire.
So what happens when you take massive steel boxes designed for the wet salty air and crane them into the middle of a damp forest? A refreshingly harmonious juncture.
Let The Sunshine In
“The basis for the design was to create something wonderfully unique for Connie and her family, and to take these boxes and break them apart gently to create light,” says Fenster of his first shipping container project.
Fenster even camped out on the property to get a feel for how the light moves through the sunny clearing where the compact two-story structure now sits. A long skylight bisecting the roof splits the top container in two, lighting up the master and guest bedrooms that make up the second floor. A steel mesh walkway bisecting the second story floor runs exactly beneath the skylight, allowing the same light to reach the first floor, where the living room will be. Only when it is dark out will it be necessary to have electric lights turned on in the house.
“The container home is acting like another series of trees in the way it is letting the light filter down into the space,” says Fenster. “The containers are split to let the light in, and also expose the site around the house. Instead of just creating a glass box [from which] you see all of your surroundings, I think it makes you more aware of your surroundings,” says Fenster.
This happens especially in the living room, where partially opened doors have been turned into what DeWitt calls her “shipping container bay windows” overlooking the forested hillside. A 40-foot container makes up the one-story wing of the house where the kitchen will be. It is brightly lit by skylights and sliding glass doors that lead into a picnic area.
In total, the house is 1,200 square feet. While the structure itself costs about $10 per square foot, DeWitt estimates that wiring and other modifications will bring that figure to between $200 and $275 per square foot.
“Cost wise, it’s probably a little bit less than regular construction,” says Fenster. “The container itself is very cost effective, but when you have to modify it, put drywall in, utilities, that’s where the cost comes in. It still came in $50 or $60 less per square foot than regular construction.”
The inside of the cabin will be drywalled, except for two walls upstairs that DeWitt says she wants to keep exposed to retain the container’s unique feel. Outside, the structure is painted industrial Red #3175, a pleasant rusty red color purchased from the container’s manufacturer.
In spite of the homages to the home’s industrial origins, DeWitt says the plan “is to make it look like a house in the woods, as natural-looking as possible.”
Surprisingly, the steel house that once tossed around on the high seas looks as if it has always been in the middle of a redwood forest, but standing inside it feels exhilaratingly mysterious.
“I don’t know where they have been,” DeWitt says of her home’s huge building blocks. “I don’t have their passport, but they’re more well-traveled than I am, for sure.”
For information on shipping container houses, visit:
containerhome.info/
weburbanist.com/2008/05/26/cargo-container-homes-and-offices/
containerhomes-info.com/
shippingcontainerhousedesign.com/
