WHY USE SHIPPING CONTAINERS?
You will save considerably on the cost of the house.
The components are easy to transport.
Fast construction.
It will be fireproof,
Hurricane and tornado resistant. your house wont fly away like others around you!
You will be extremely secure.
It will meet all building codes.
Easily customized,
Termite and rodent proof,
You will gain increased equity in the property.
Low maintenance.
WANTED... an exciting house to be featured on TV!
If you are considering building an exciting house soon and based on shipping containers and you plan to engage architects for the design of the house, you might like to contact us. We seek another client to participate in a television program about the construction of their house. There are considerable financial benefits! Could it be you?
Call Geoffrey Fulton now on +61 03 52 619422 or in the USA +1 407 914 2216 (but please.... not while we are sleeping!).
HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF CONTAINER BASED BUILDINGS
These are on the drawing board or have been completed:
THE DARE HOUSE
We were invited to create a design for a client retiring from a rural property in Victoria to a beautiful small elevated property overlooking Glaziers Bay in Tasmania.
After visiting our SMALLisSMART HOUSE, he was enthusiastic about us preparing a design developed from 5 X 40 ft and 2 X 20 ft containers.
The most dramatic part of the house is the "FISH". The first floor study / library / guest room cantilevers out 7 meters over the courtyard! We invite you to watch this site as the initial sketch plan now develops to a final sketch plan then working drawings and detail documentation.
The Armidale House, NSW.
(9 X 40 foot and 2 X 20 foot containers)
This is our latest 2 storey container based house for a family that has recently moved to Australia from England. It has been an interesting exercise so far in that we have not met the clients except through many emails back and forth until we sent this design to them.
The response was:
"Bloody hell! Geoffrey - it's amazing!!! Husband and I have been staring at it, we're too gob smacked to talk to you right now - both need to stare adoringly at our respective computer screens and keep looking. Kids got too tired and so headed to bed so we will show it to them in the morning - that central space!!!! wow! I had an inkling there was going to be some kind of pool going from the outside in but couldn't work out how you could do it without the beasties getting in - is it a glass floor??? Have a glass of something with Carla and we'll just continue to sit here.............. staring.
This is the stuff of dreams Geoffrey! are you GOD (whover she is?)"
And after a few more days:
"It is too perfect and has every element that says us - you truly took everything we told you and created a home which is more perfect for us than anything we could ever have imagined - you are clearly secretly a rather scary mind reader!!!"
And:
"I have brought your plans with me to the UK and stare at them like a teenager with a secret stash of porn - each time I look at them I see something else and every part of the house is a delight which I can imagine us in. The putting of the children and us in separate wings was inspirational and something we would not have thought of yet is so perfect for them as they become teenagers (and we discover our second childhood)."
These comments (we think they are a great reference) may encourage other potential clients anywhere in the world to contact us and start some dialogue towards us designing another exciting house for them. In the new year, we will visit these new clients as we will to any client with a substantial project anywhere in the world (at our expense).
NEWCASTLE CONPARTMENTS
This low cost 21 unit student accommodation complex to be built near the Newcastle University in NSW, will not be visually apparent as a container based building.
Each non standard sized 3.2m wide container module will probably be built and fitted out in China or Indonesia strictly to our design and standard then shipped directly to Newcastle.
There will be 3 levels of 7 units above ground and 3 modules below ground.
We will visit factories before placing the order on behalf of the client.
SCHOOL FOR MENTALLY IMPAIRED ADULTS AT LA TROBE UNIVERSITY
for LA TROBE LIFE SKILLS PTY. LTD.
This project is to be constructed with 10 X 20 foot and 14 X 40 foot containers and conventional construction for the central meeting hall.
The CRISP HOUSE at KING LAKE, VICTORIA
This house is to be constructed from 9 X 40 ft shipping containers and some conventional construction. It will be located in one of the worst fire risk areas of Australia.
Containers provide fire resistance. All external materials will be metal.
The selected colour scheme!
The Kelly House at Napoleons, Victoria (from 3 X 40 foot and 1 X 20 foot containers.)
The Xin Ling Ji House at Koo Wee Rup, Victoria (from 14 X 40 ft. containers)
Starting from this!
To be developed into this design!
A Disaster Assistance Facility.
This complex is designed to be delivered by train or trucks to anywhere in USA, and setup overnight to provide sanitation, drinking water, food, clothing and building materials to victims of hurricanes etc.
A Residential Village in Southern Sudan for a very large agricultural enterprise.
This village will come about because all the materials and equipment for operating the farm has to be shipped in to the very remote location. The containers fully loaded leave Australia and take so long to reach their destination that it is not possible to lease the containers (the usual process),so the company has to buy them. When they are unloaded at site, there is nothing they can do with them so we came up with the idea of creating the village from the continuous supply of containers!
The Barker House
A client came to us inviting us to come up with some ideas for a holiday house on a rugged rural property in Victoria. Here are some of the designs we came up with.
The Fulton Kerkering House
This design of 4 storeys was our original design for our own new house and office. It has a basement where one can work and live underground during really hot weather without using air conditioning! It also houses a wine collection with the right climate. Because of the "monocoque" construction, containers lend themselves to dramatic cantilevers. In the end, we decided to use conventional construction because we had some rather large classic furniture that would have been too crammed into the limited width of containers.
The Stafford Harvey House, Geelong, Australia
This unusual but exciting design was prepared for a client as an alternative to the design that we had prepared according to their brief. It was offered to an next door neighbour who was objecting to the original design. Unfortunately it didn't get built (the original design is shown on this web site under architecture) but we would have liked to have built it because we believe it would have been a great house!
A Canal Barge / Floating Home, France.
Having researched the cost of purchasing a second hand cruising canal boat, we have come to the conclusion that it will be less expensive to build a powered houseboat based on the 40 ft shipping container that will be fitted out in Australia then shipped to France where it will be lifted and locked on the a catamarn steel hull. The hull will contain tanks for fuel, drinking water and black water.
(Drawings of the design are in the Marine section of this site.)
The Conigliaro-Stark House , Melbourne
These first home builders after seeing the SMALLisSMART HOUSE, asked us to design a low cost house for them to include 2 bedrooms, a study and a room for a music studio. The house will be constructed from 2 X 40 ft containers, 1 X 20 ft container and conventional bridging between the 2 X 40 ftrs.
The 54 foot SMALLisSMART HOUSE , Anywhere you like!
We have found a source for 54 foot containers (from the trans Australian railway network. The extra length has allowed us to create a 2 bedroom SMALLisSMART HOUSE in a single container!)
The Coleman house and unit.
The 7000 sq.ft. Oakland House, Granny flat, Boathouse and Houseboat.
Designed of course for construction from shipping containers for tornado resistance