| Floor Plans / Drawings |
| Construction Process |
| About Builders/Owners |
| About Måns Tham Arkitektkontor |
| Architecture | Måns Tham Arkitektkontor |
| Structural Engineer | Egil Bartos, Ramboll |
| Area | 150 sqm (1600 sqft) |
| Containers | 8 |
| Bedrooms | 4 |
| Bathrooms | 2 |
| Location | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Photography | Staffan Andersson |
| Year | 2019 |
Description by architects
This 1600 sqft shipping container home was built of eight assembled, 20′ and 40′ re-used, high cube shipping containers. The house is built on a steep lot next to a lake, outside of Stockholm. There was a ban on dynamite for the site and there was no room for a slab, just a steep canyon where a lot of rainwater flows toward the lake. That is why the modular home stands on pillars or stilts and land light on the terrain. The structural walls of the containers allowed the upper level to be larger than the entrance level footprint. This way the building adjusts to the V-shaped natural canyon of the site. The clients, a truck driver and a therapist with three kids, have built the house mostly by themselves with big help from their father and father in law who is a skilled welder and used to run a mechanic workshop. The interior is a composition of rare finds and re-used building components.
A shipping container is not a great starting point for a home because of its limited width, 2,4 m. Also, as soon as you take out any part of the corrugated walls between two containers to make a wider room they lose their structural strength. Therefore we had to put a lot of effort into deciding which walls to cut and which to save so that we could use the containers with as little additional structure as possible.
The husband worked for a demolition company and is an avid mechanic with a love for old customized American cars. Re-use and alteration became the way to build the house, much in line with the custom car culture. Salvaged from demolition sites around Stockholm, components like timber planks, metal boards, staircases in wood and steel, and parts of old kitchens were re-used and installed after slight modifications.
Each architectural detail was drawn directly from the raw material that was found. Trust and dialogue rather than standard solutions characterized the building process that included many discussions on-site between the architect, client/builder, and structural engineer. Quick hand drawings complemented the drawing set.
The original proposal and plan were never changed though. In a housing scheme, the plan drawings and the flow of the plan, the ability to always walk towards the light and to have surprising views and diagonals, is regardless if you make a container house or a wood frame house, very important.
This is a modest home for a family with three kids so each square meter had to be planned carefully. The entrance level has a den and a guest bedroom, laundry, and a master bath with a view. The upper level has a living-dining and terrace towards the view and bedrooms in the back towards the forest.
The top container has two functions, a look-out mezzanine where the kids can find solitude but still be around, and also as a light shaft that brings the midday sun into the north-facing living room. Even though the harsh site faces north the living-dining room is flooded with direct sun and the roof terrace has a great evening sun location.
The upper level is connected to the pine tree forest behind the house by a free-spanning eight-meter steel truss sky bridge. The rectilinear world of stacked containers meets the natural form of the hillside. The modular shipping container home stands on steel pillars/stilts on concrete plinths. This eliminated the problem with large amounts of rainwater that flows down the steep hillside. This is very explicit during heavy rains seen from the lower bathroom. It has one big window facing the zen-like view of the canyon rock at the backside of the house. A small openable window to the left makes it possible to hear the birds outside when taking a bath.
The subdividing mullions of each window, together with exterior add-ons that were needed to make the containers up to code (such as railings, chimneys, and water dispensers) were all designed to give the house its own logic and proportions. A composition that dissolves and goes beyond the absolute symmetry of shipping containers.
There is a point where the stacked containers, with everything that is added and modified, cease to be containers and instead becomes an assembled building fixed in a landscape. This point interests the architects and guided the designers through many design challenges with the house.
Floor Plans / Drawings
Construction Process
About Builders/Owners
We who are behind this project of Sweden's first container house, Thomas & Linda. We live during the construction period in a construction shed of 20 sqm together with three children aged 6, 12 and 16 years. We have been running the project with the container villa since January 2015. We threw ourselves into it at full speed and were very naive. Which turned out to be a good condition. Had we known before about all the obstacles and problems that had arisen, we would probably never have started this. Now we have come a long way and take one problem at a time when it arises. Are you interested in building your own container house? We have an architect who knows the technology needed and two designers who have developed a working concept for this. In that case, contact us at info@containervillan.se and we can help you move forward with your thoughts. Thomas & Linda
| Website | https://containervillan.se/ |
| Klokahem | https://klokahem.etc.se/om/containervillan |
| https://www.instagram.com/containervillan/ |
About Måns Tham Arkitektkontor
Måns is an architect and urban strategist based in Stockholm. His practice makes architecture that stand out and make sense. The work ranges from private residences to community-based urban design. The architectural end result is always the goal while the process and method vary depending the project.
Before starting his own practice, Måns worked for 8 years at renowned architecture firms as an architect and project leader. He has worked in Sweden, France and the US with projects ranging from master-plans to interior design. Måns also teaches as an adjunct faculty member at KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm and writes and lectures on urban design.
| Address | Döbelnsgatan 79, 113 52 Stockholm, Sweden |
| Phone | +46 (0)704 80 76 17 |
| mans@manstham.com | |
| Website | https://manstham.com/ |
1600 sqft Modular Shipping Container Home on Pillars/Stilts on a Steep Lot, Stockholm, Sweden