The start of my love for container homes started in 2012. At that time I was working at a logistics company that also shipped containers. So I already was very familiar with the sizes and types, but I never looked at them as building blocks. That started when I got a business gift from one of our suppliers, a nearby container terminal. The gift was 9 foam stress containers that you could squeeze and throw around. One day I was playing a little bit with them, stacking, arranging until I thought, these would make very nice blocks to create a house pretty quickly. At the same time, one of our container trucks came by, with an empty container. The sound of an empty container driving past is unique. It really makes a deep sound of metal being abused, but at the same time sounding like it can withstand almost any abuse what so ever. So, I was sold and since then, 8 years ago, I love containers and I still play around with the foam blocks to create first ideas.
That’s also my tip for today. Buy some model containers or create some from wood, 40ft, 20ft, to stack and move around. With some imagination, you can picture your future house, thinking of the basic construction and layout of your home. It will give you insights into options you can’t see on a 2d drawing.
Another option, which takes a little bit more time an practice is using Google Sketchup. I have created some basic constructions in SketchUp, but it will take a lot more time to learn. The benefit is that you can actually walk around the construction from a first person perspective which is even better.
Below you can see some of my SketchUp examples.
