Vermont Container House

The Vermont Container House is an unbuilt design for a 4 container single family house. The house is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath home that uses sustainable strategies and maximizes the benefits of the prefab’d containers. The house organization will allow for a meaningful, dynamic space to be created in the negative space between the containers. 

Notes on Container Houses: After initial pricing of container based projects, they often quickly change from a house made of containers to buildings made with more traditional methods.  In our experience, we have found that as soon as containers are heavily customize with big cantilevers, double height spaces, etc., they end up costing the same as, or more than, custom site built projects, plus there is this limitation: cold weather requires heavy insulation. If one wants to preserve the exterior of a container, the already diminutive interior dimensions shrink pretty quickly when insulation is added.  If one doesn’t like that restriction, one starts to cut up the containers, add insulation to the outside and… it gets expensive.  If cost savings are of interest, stacking the containers similarly to how they are meant to be organized on boats, etc., can generate some savings and a cool, but tight, aesthetic. So far, given trade-offs, when houses have started with an idea of using containers, they have all quickly shifted to less restrictive construction methods

Location

  • Middlesex, Vermont

Design

  • 2,300 SF Container House