You can also build a spacious holiday home with old shipping containers. MB Architecture built a domicile with 170 square meters of living space and a high hall from six containers.
In New York State, a vacation home called “Amagansett Modular” was built from six shipping containers. The construction of containers is popular because the steel boxes can be bought used all over the world. Because the containers are stacked in more than five layers on ships, they are stable enough to use them to build a house with several floors. The containers are available in several lengths. The width is always 2.352 meters. The normal height is 2.39 meters. If larger rooms are designed from several containers, you can also use the rarer high version. It then measures 2.69 meters. With “Amagansett Modular” the containers create a central space that is double the height. So the house looks very airy and spacious.
Construction in a hall
The containers were chosen for this holiday home for an unusual reason: the house was to be largely completed in a hall rather than on the property. It was only assembled on site. Containers do not require extra-wide transport, they are moved with a normal semi-trailer. They can be set down in unfavorable places with a crane.
The company MB Architecture states that the project would have been 30 percent cheaper than with a conventional construction method. “We knew from previous experience that conventional construction with local labor would be prohibitively expensive,” the company said. “We suggested pre-fabricating the building off site and using shipping containers to cut costs, make transportation easier, and enable the kind of design experimentation that customers were open to. Our work so far has proven we through streamlining this process can achieve significant cost reductions. ”
The building and the ingenious solutions show the company’s experience in the field of modular construction. “This is the culmination of 10 years of testing,” said Maziar Behrooz, founder of MB Architecture, proudly to the “Dwell” portal. Lucky for Behrooz: the customers were delighted with the designs and did not request any changes.
Nevertheless, it is a luxury building. Read here how do-it-yourselfers can build a great house with containers and little money: “Recycling for living – the couple built this luxury house out of containers“.
Lots of light and high rooms
For “Amagansett Modular” five large containers with a length of twelve meters and a smaller one with a length of only three meters were used. This resulted in 170 square meters of living space. The house is not a collection of shoeboxes, the containers have been significantly modified and many side walls have been removed. And of course the containers were insulated so that they can be used as living space.
The construction follows the contours of the sloping terrain. The broad stairs and a double-height room are typical of MB Architecture’s houses. This hall and the generous use of windows break up the narrowness of the original container.
Another advantage of containers is that they do not have to lie flat. Some of them can protrude freely into the air and thus enable buildings that could not be built with brick and mortar.
Amagansett Modular was manufactured in a hall, but is an individual production and not a product off the assembly line. The transport, installation and connection to the supply line only took two days.
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