I first met
Colin Reedy about 12 years ago. He had just returned from studying design
in Milan and I had just returned from Rio de Janeiro. We found ourselves
stuck in Portland, Oregon, I as an owner and designer of artist lofts,
he as a struggling designer of furniture who happened to end up living
and working in one of my lofts. It was apparent from the first moment I
saw Colin's designs that he was a maverick genius. A lot of artists passed
through those lofts over the years. Some of them went on to a great deal
of fame. I can think of few whose work was as immediately exciting
as Colin's. Colin Reedy carries with him an enthusiasm for creativity and
for his work.
He has had
a good deal of success, all of it deserved. He travels frequently and has
lived much of the past 20 years outside of the United States. He first
presented the idea of a nomadic house to me several years ago. I've been
pestering him for the past two years to put the concept into a written
form for EscapeArtist.com Here's the first installment.
If renting
is out, then what are the options? Buying a house in my
price range means a huge financial mortgage payment situation and probably
a major renovation project. I don’t have the money, time, or
interest for this now. Besides, I am not sure I want to live
in one place long enough to make a house investment worth it.
I like to travel and seem to move often as I search for my ultimate escape
destination. The last 12 years have seen me living in Chicago,
San Francisco, Rome, Milan, Amsterdam, Portland, and now Seattle…and I’m
hoping to land myself in Australia or New Zealand in a couple years.
Mobile homes
and recreational vehicles offer the portability for travel (across land),
but mobile homes often use cheap materials and poor construction and still
cost many thousands of dollars. An RV is more “travel” than “home”
with so much of cost and maintenance involving the engine and mechanical
parts.
Furthermore,
both mobile homes and RV’s usually come pre-designed with little room for
customization…and little room in general.
And for my
needs, which involves some work area to use tools, make a mess, and keep
my stuff secure, and RV wouldn’t be the choice.
So my criteria
are: cheap ownership, some measure of portability, security, and opportunity
for customization. Solution: a huge foot locker with windows
and a door…maybe on wheels! And then I found thousands of just
what I needed!!!!
Portland and
Seattle are shipping ports and every day I see huge boats loading and unloading
giant metal containers.
These containers
arrive and depart on train cars or semi-trucks, easily hoisted and set
in place with cranes or forklifts. Shipping containers are
a global standard unit and come in sizes of 20, 24, 40, and 45 feet long
with 20 and 40 footers being the most common. Eight feet high
and 8.5 feet wide, they are sturdily built to stack up 8 to10 units and
connect at the corners with a simple locking device. They can
even be found extra tall at 9.5 or 10 feet high. All containers
have wooden floors about 1.25 inches thick of plywood or tongue and groove
boards. The construction is generally heavy gauge corrugated
steel re-enforced at the four corners and center of each long side with
a vertical support of steel square tube. And the doors could
secure a bank vault! Each of the double doors locks in place
with two floor to roof steel poles that twist into position with lots of
redundant mechanisms and locations for four burly padlocks. Remember,
these containers were designed to survive stormy sea crossings and then
be handled and opened by clumsy drunk dock workers in any part of the world.
Initial investigations
only made me more excited about the possibility to create a living/working
situation based on shipping containers. Individually, I could
get a good used one for about $1500-1800.
If I wanted
2 or 3, which seemed like a better scenario, the price could drop as low
as $1200-1300 each. These are Portland, Oregon, prices and with
the global abundance of containers, I’m sure even greater deals can be
found…Hong Kong, Sydney, Rotterdam, Dakar? Prices don’t lower
much for size and I felt the 40 footers had the biggest selection and design
possibility. Another major is aluminum or steel. A 40-foot steel
container weighs about 9000 pounds empty, compared to 6800 for the same
aluminum container. Cutting and drilling aluminum is much easier than steel,
but welding it requires some skill and equipment not as readily available
as for steel. I’m assuming I’ll be cutting windows, vents,
and holes for electricity and water so what material I choose makes a difference.
I have a little wire feed welder and can get a cutting torch or (better)
rent a plasma cutter for $40-50 per day. Side note: a plasma
cutter sounds very scary high tech, but uses only air and electricity to
cleanly slice thru steel and even stainless steel like butter.
All you need
is an air compressor. A truly amazing tool, but it will NOT
work on aluminum.
Shipping containers
used on ocean going vessels must be inspected and certified every so often
because they are stacked very high and subject to rigorous conditions.
Containers used on trains and trucks are never stacked more than two high
and do not require the same inspections. Modifications such
as windows, doors, vents and so forth would not prevent a container from
passing inspection as long as it still could be stacked and locked in place.
However, steel braces may be required over large holes such as windows
or additional doors. So I could ship my modular nomadic studio
from Seattle to Sydney, no problem!
What about
delivery? If I purchased a container from any of the few
companies in the Portland or Seattle area, they would deliver it by truck
(anywhere a truck can maneuver I guessed) in either metropolitan area for
$150. And a moving fee within the area would be a similar rate.
On-site maneuvering could require a crane and reach upwards of a few hundred
dollars. Construction contractors often use shipping containers as
on-site offices or storage, so this situation is not unusual.
But where
would I put it? And what about electricity and water and
all the amenities a normal living situation offers? Ok, here’s
the creative part… I saw this as a “phase” situation whereby initially
I would NOT reside in these containers. I would need a place
with electricity and water nearby while I carried out the necessary modifications.
A friend offered a 60 by 100 foot empty lot for $300/month on which I could
conduct my efforts and reside later if I chose. I could hook
up to his electricity and water as long as needed. Yes, I am
back in the “rent” situation, but at about 20-25% what I would be paying
otherwise. I felt like I had enough information to start designing.
I searched
for examples of prior efforts to modify shipping containers for housing.
The companies that sold the containers sometimes made modifications like
windows or doors for the contractors to use at construction sites, but
nothing interesting.
I found images
from Hong Kong where people were living in containers set on huge metal
frames in an apartment-like arrangement. Not much had been
done to the containers except stairway access. The best examples
I found were not for shipping containers, but from mid-century efforts
at modular housing or “utopian” mass housing. In the 1920’s
and 30’s, the German Bauhaus movement and the French architect Le Corbusier
proposed many of the first modern “apartment” buildings with efficient
floor plans to equitably house the masses.
But the
American engineer/architect/futurist, Buckminster Fuller (known best
for his geodesic dome designs) probably offered the best examples in
his Dymaxion House designs. Fuller proposed mass produced
compact housing designs that offered all the amenities of a conventional
dwelling. From him I found good inspiration for the bathroom
design and maybe more.
I imagine two
or three containers configured for living, studio, and workshop.
Making use of the outside areas would be as important as the inside areas.
Awnings, tarps, decks, balconies, or glass covered green house areas could
make the whole situation very comfortable. I started to sketch
ideas and I even built a small model of the 60 x 100 foot site with three
accurate scaled wooden blocks to represent the containers.
Next issue:
- configurations
that create courtyards and outdoor work areas that maximize the space between
containers.
- stacking
the containers on top of one another to create covered areas, car parking,
and terraces.
- Electricity
options from local hook up to passive and active solar.
- Water service
for kitchen and bathrooms and rain collection planning.
- Heating
ideas for cold climates and venting circulation for warmer climates.
