A prefabricated Shipping Container home in Flagstaff Arizona has won a Sustainable Building Award from the Coconino County Sustainable Building Program for meeting guidelines of promoting sustainability, minimizing negative ecological and social impact in building design, construction and operations.
The container home was conceived by its owners Marvin Glotfelty and Marie Jones, who took their ideas to Antony Brown and Tom Hahn at the Ecosa Design Studio who put project together. From the first plans, the project has took about 1 1/2 years to complete, with the 2000 square foot home costing around $400,000 with “all the bells and whistles“.
From The Designers…
This project features recycled ocean-going shipping containers as the main structure; but the home will also include a whole host of other environmental and energy-efficient design ideas and materials. The home is though to be the first shipping-container-based house in Flagstaff, and one of the first multi-story container projects in Arizona.
The containers have been pre-fabricated in Phoenix and trucked to the northern Arizona site for their placement into the project. With the containers placed and connected together, the home will be completed on-site under the direction of the owners. The project is planned to be ready to be occupied in late 2010.
This project uses five 40-foot long “high-cube” containers for the main house, in a criss-cross plan that rises into an open, dayligh filled, two-story high atrium space. This atrium will have operable windows to allow for natural “stack” ventilation, and will be capped off with a pitched roof angled for best performance with solar-electric photovoltaic panels. Across a raised deck from the main house, a detached 20-foor long, standard height container will house an artist studio. The entire project has been designed for rainwater and snowmelt harvesting by Barnabus Kane of TBK Associates in Prescott, Arizona, and the site will also be finished with a permaculture based, minimal water use, native landscaping.
The exterior of the containers will retain their robust steel exterior, and be refurbished and repainted with a super-insulating ceramic based paint, in forest and sunset colors. A “floating” steel interior stair, as well as the entry porch, will be suspended on steel rods from the containers above, accessing the second floor bedrooms and roof decks made from portions of an additional container. Super-insulated windows with recycled content frames will be set back in recycled steel “shade boxes” that will keep the sun and snow at bay. The project will also include soy=based spray-foam insulation, radiant floor heating, soy-stained concrete floors, photovoltaic panels, recycled metal structure and roofing, translucent super-insulating glazing, graywater recovery, low-water use fixtures and appliances, recycled content and non-toxic finishes and energy efficient lighting. site fencing and other landscape features will be made from portions of the containers that were cut away in fabrication.
Courtesy Of: Ecosa, Arizona Daily Sun
