• STOCKHOLM, SWEDISH DETACHED HOUSE
- Architect: Måns Tham Arkitektkontor
- Size : 150 150 square meters
- Photographer: Staffan Andersson
The family home was assembled from eight 6 m (20 ft) wide and 12 m (40 ft) long reused shipping containers. The house was built on a steep section on the shores of a lake outside Stockholm. The plot is closed to blasting and there is no space for stone slabs, only a steep gorge with a large amount of rainwater flowing to the lake. That is why the house stands on pillars and lightly connects to the terrain. The structural wall of the container allows the area of the upper floor to be larger than the footprint of the first floor. In this way, the building can be adapted to the V-shaped natural canyon of the site. The owners are a truck driver and a therapist who have three children. Their house was mainly built by themselves, and their father and father-in-law, a skilled welder who used to run a machine shop, also provided a lot of help. The interior is made up of rare objects and reused building components.
The freight container is not an ideal start for a home, as its width is only 2.4 meters. And, as soon as you remove any part of the corrugated wall between the two containers to make the room wider, its structural strength will be destroyed. As a result, designers had to make a lot of effort to decide which walls to cut off and which to keep in order to add as little structure as possible when using shipping containers.
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The husband, who works for a demolition company, is an avid mechanic with a soft spot for vintage custom American cars. Reuse and retrofitting become the way houses are built, very much in line with the custom car culture. Parts salvaged from demolition sites around Stockholm, such as wooden panels, metal panels, wooden and steel stairs, and parts of the old kitchen, were reused and installed with minor modifications.
Every architectural detail is extracted directly from the raw materials found. Trust and dialogue rather than standard solutions characterize the construction process, which includes many live discussions between architects, clients/builders and structural engineers. The architects supplemented this set of drawings with quick hand-drawing.
But the original proposal and plane never changed. In a housing system, floor plans and flat streamlines, the ability to always walk towards the light, and having surprising views and angles are very important, both for container houses and timber houses.
plan
It is not a spacious home for a family with three children, so every square meter must be carefully planned. The entrance level has a private space and a guest bedroom, laundry, and a master bathroom with views. The upper level has a living-dining room and terrace facing the view, while the bedroom at the back faces the forest.
The container at the top has two functions, the first is a mezzanine overlooking the distance, where children can enjoy private time but still be around the family; It is also a light well that brings the midday sun into the north-facing living room. Even though the grounds face north, the living-dining room is flooded with direct sunlight and the roof terrace has a position to enjoy the sunset.
The upper level is connected to the pine forest behind the house by a steel truss flyover with a free span of 8 meters. The right-angled world of stacked containers meets the natural form of the hillside. The house stands on steel columns on a concrete base. This eliminates the problem of a lot of rainwater running down the steep hillside. In heavy rain, it is very clear that this is seen from the bathroom on the lower level. It has a large window facing the zen view of the canyon rocks at the back of the house. There is a small window on the left that can be opened, and the birds outside can be heard while bathing.
The subdivision mullions for each window, as well as the addition of external additions (such as railings, chimneys, and water dispensers) to bring the container into line with design specifications, are designed to give the house logic and proportion. The result is a composition that dissolves into and transcends the absolute symmetry of the container.
At this point, the stacked containers, plus everything that has been added and modified, dissolve the containers themselves and instead become assembled buildings fixed in the landscape. This intrigued the designers and guided them through many of the house's design challenges.
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