shipping container

Container House Design with Minimalist Grit: Part 4 (Podcast)

Container House Design with Minimalist Grit: Part 4 (Podcast)

This is week 4 - and the last post in our series - covering Oklahoma City’s first shipping container residence. Last week we looked at our unique foundation design, touched on shipping container anatomy, and looked at container modifications. I shared information about the homeowner/developer and his website. This week we are picking up where we left off and doing something special.

This week, I wanted to share an in-person interview with Josh McBee, our shipping container homeowner and owner of High Cube Industries, LLC.

Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 3

Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 3

This is week three covering Oklahoma City’s first shipping container residence. In last week's post we looked at how the home was positioned on the site, peeked at some interior pictures, and discussed the concepts of both minimalism and rightsizing. Whew! 

This week, I want to move to the exterior and reveal a few more facets of this container design. I hope to share some insight into how building with containers must be approached differently from the ground up. I also want to introduce you to the owner and share more about his vision for working with shipping containers in the future. 

Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 2

Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 2

Welcome back! We began covering the design of this Oklahoma City shipping container home in last week's post. This was the first container home permitted by the City of Oklahoma City when we filed in 2014, and the first shipping container design either the property owner or myself had experienced.

As an architect, it is always a challenge to put myself into the mind of my client. During the Pre-Design phase, I get to ask a lot of questions and get to know the owner. 

Transferring another person’s vision and allowing room for their identity to thrive is what it takes to design a home. This is harder than you might imagine, but it is very rewarding when you get it right! Serving another person in this way is not a one way street, and the best residential designs are a product of a team effort.

 

Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 1

Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 1

Shipping containers belong in a dark, modern version of Dwell magazine featuring Frankenstein’s metro-modular castle. These corrugated units of space are all the rage in print, but they are underrepresented in reality. Point blank, there were no shipping container homes in the Oklahoma City metro in early 2014. That is when I received an email from a childhood friend.

He had heard that I was an architect practicing sustainable design and he wanted to team up to do something new. He had just returned to Oklahoma after living out west and in Asia for several years. Through his travels, he had learned a lot about living lightly and found that a minimalist lifestyle suited him well. He wanted some help designing a small house using recycled shipping containers as the main structure. Sounded interesting!