apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

This house is great! I saw it this past weekend on the Rice Design Alliance Architecture Tour. Amazing. The recycled glass driveway is beautiful.

I toured this home last weekend. It is amazing, open, friendly, and super-sustainable. I hope they cover Houston & then with nation with more such thoughtful designs.

Your post misspelled the designer/builder. It's Numen Construction.

very cool. i'll take one.

Now I'm thinking a shipping container would make a dandy bedroom.

where does that huge paper pendant lamp come from?

i believe ikea has a lamp like that...? or not, just checked their site, this is the closest thing:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60103854

I hate to be the nay sayer here but shipping containers are not the way to go for a dwelling. They are 8.5" wide and 40" long which is too narrow to be comfortable. Unless you cut them up and span them like this house is, they are too impractical In which case there is probably not much savings from traditional building materials. I'd hate to live in a steel box in Houston in the summer too. Go to the google maps street view of it at 206 Cordell, Houston, TX. It looks like it was sighted in really bad area with a view of industrial warehouse across the street.

Omg that's a crazy large space!

You can read the write-up of the Cordell house by Stephen Fox, Houston's preeminent architectural historian, here:

http://offcite.org/2009/03/23/small-houses-x9-a-tour-for-the-times

There are also photographs of the house by Paul Hester there.

I am so excited to find this house. We are in the midst of building a Container Home implementing a lot of the ideas used here, cutting out and spanning a central open space. It makes so much sense for us as we live in earthquake and wildfire risk area plus it gives us quick and inexpensive and recycled structural support for the house. We are thrilled these are more popular, if you like this there is another container home in Redondo Beach, CA and Richmond, CA, they both utilize the refrigerated containers, so they are pre-insulated to R-40 ....so efficient.

Oh and mobeldesign - they come in lengths up to 53' long and come in regular height of 8' or high cube of 9'6". The whole point is to provide structure instead of traditional stick built. They are incredibly well engineered, much stronger than traditionally built homes, would be great for earthquake and tornado regions and they are fire resistant to exterior wildfire risk. They provide a great modern feel - if you like that, some don't (a guy in the Mohave Desert build one to look like a New England Farmhouse) and for every 10 containers we bring here from China we only ship 2 back, ever seen the ports of LA or Oakland, CA - reuse, recycle and get a house half the price!!

Anyone know where the matching brown leather chairs come from?

There are more pictures of Cordell House and other ISBU shipping container buildings at http://www.container-life.com

The interior shots look very livable and well executed. The outside, on the other hand, is a nightmare. If you are going to use shipping containers you need to figure out how to add the other required pieces without things looking stuck-on. A successful use of containers should transcend this house which looks like a container with an owner-built slant roof plopped on top. This is really a neighborhood eye-sore. People involved with the project team, who I have spoken to directly, have a million excuses for the poor choices they admit to and have blamed the owner’s small pocketbook. That is just obviously poor planning and communication on both parts. No kudos should be given for using containers if they look like you're living in containers! Nice landscaping and interior (like I said). Rewarding poor design solutions only encourages more; standards should be set much higher than this.