7 Shipping Containers Make Up This Modern Home in New Orleans
Seven gray metal rectangles create a stacked array of straight lines on a quiet street in New Orleans. These shipping containers once traveled along the Mississippi River. Now stationary, they make up the extraordinary home of Kicker Kalozdi, founder of premium bag company DamnDog, and his wife Anne Kalozdi, who is a biomedical engineer. They designed and built this house made out of shipping containers… despite having had no real experience building a house before!
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Eight feet wide and 40 feet long, two shipping containers placed side by side and two more behind those create the 16-foot wide main floor of their home. The other three containers stack to make room for a second-floor office, a third-floor bonus room, and outdoor terraces (from where you can see other shipping containers floating lazily on boats atop the mighty Mississippi).
The couple chose shipping containers for a lot of reasons. Born and raised in New Orleans, though Kicker was away at college when Hurricane Katrina hit, the trauma of such a devastating natural disaster (his family was stranded on their roof for four days before being rescued, and they lost their family business) stuck with him when he came back to the city and began thinking about buying a home.
“I was struggling to find a home that felt… right. And right to me was a few things. One of them was the layout. I wanted a house that had the floor plan I wanted, one that I could work from. But more importantly I needed a house that felt safe, and that was really a struggle to find. I wanted a house that I didn’t want to have to worry about the siding being ripped off because of high winds. Something that was going to be a little bit more sturdy,” confessed Kicker.
You can tell this is a house made out of shipping containers from the moment you step inside. The shipping containers’ original floors are the home’s floors. The corrugated metal walls and ceilings are visible in many parts. They embraced the industrial vibes and have exposed I-beams, wiring conduits, and other elements that hint at these shipping containers’ pasts.
“We didn’t want to hide the fact that this is a shipping container house. A lot of houses have been built out of shipping containers and, and we are by no means the first ones, but what we did a little differently is we tried to embrace the aesthetic of the shipping container. We used this natural element that it is, and really kind of highlighted it,” said Kicker.
But while the couple embraced the industrial feel of their home’s metal boxes, they also knew they would have to add visual warmth to the space. A reclaimed wood accent wall in the living room is a beautiful statement that draws your eye up.
Wood reclaimed from a farmhouse act as the doors of the master bathroom. A live-edge slab of wood makes up the kitchen island. And the color orange is an energetic accent splashed liberally inside and outside of the house.
But the best element of their home (besides their adorable dog Chewie, of course), may very well be all the personal touches Kicker and Anne incorporated into the space, like the floor-to-ceiling shelves full of special knick-knacks from their childhoods and travels. They call the long, naturally lit hallway from the kitchen to their bedroom the “Hall of Glory” and it features a motivating array of medals and awards (to call this young couple athletic is an understatement).
The bright orange metal shipping container wall in the kitchen holds the start of an already impressive magnet souvenir collection from travels. And Kicker’s office—he runs DamnDog out of it—is on a second-floor loft where he can work overlooking the house they built.
“I wanted a space that I was excited to work from. To have the ability to come up with creative ideas for the next product and always be excited to work from. Everyone works every day, but you want to have a spot that really motivates you and encourages you to keep on going and going and going. So, this space is great, but what really makes it special is when you look out here, you can really see all that we’ve accomplished. I mean you see this beautiful place filled with natural light,” said Kicker.
“So, just looking at this space every day from my office, it’s just, it’s so extremely motivating. You see how we took a tiny single container, and combined it with another container and created this giant, massive space… it’s impressive. I am so fortunate to see this every single day, and look at what we’ve accomplished so far,” explained Kicker.
“There is a lot of warmth in here, but it’s something that we built together, and that alone is just so comforting to come in here and know that we made this happen, that we put our heart and soul into it,” said Anne.