712 Wellesley Avenue Container Home

This Royal Oak Container home is beautiful in its simplicity. While on one hand, it’s a simple two-story rectangle, numerous accents break up what would otherwise be a stark, monolithic structure. 

Travel a few miles north of Downtown Detroit near the intersection of interstates 696 and 75 and you’ll find the quiet suburb of Royal Oak, Michigan. This home is on the eastern edge of Royal Oak, only a bit more than a mile from the Detroit Zoo. And like many of the zoo animals probably do, this home feels exotic and yet comfortable in its environment.

Shipping container construction is not the first thing you think of for suburban Michigan, but builders are starting to find their groove. This container house may have looked out of place during its construction, but once finished, it strikes a balance in the neighborhood. Bold and modern enough to be noticed as you drive by, but not such a wild departure that it looks out of place. It’s a feeling that many shipping container homeowners are likely striving to reproduce with their own projects.

For this iconic container house in Royal Oak, let’s start with the shipping containers themselves. The home makes use of eight shipping containers in total, four 40 foot boxes, and four shorter units. The containers are stacked two high in two parallel groups, forming the left and ride sides of the home.

Connecting the two stacks are the container foundation and the roof. Slightly sloping to the side of the home, the single-plane roof pushes your eyes to the left while the driveway and detached garage pull your attention to the right.

The simple, flat roof saves on labor and material and is less maintenance intensive as well. Yet, the roofline’s simplicity doesn’t detract from the home because the elevation views are so captivating.

The roof tension continues at the front facade. What would otherwise be a flat front view is instead broken up by windows, textures, colors, and a small porch with uneven columns. Providing your eye with multiple materials and hues to take in gives the subtle impression of complexity and luxury without exorbitant expense. The design of this shipping container home continually keeps you on your toes.

This container home also takes a different tactic to the overall floorplan design. In many houses, you take an additive approach, adding boxes representing rooms together until you get the floor plan you want. The result is a polygonal perimeter that juts in and out around the various rectangular forms.

This home uses a negative approach, meaning you start with a large rectangular shape and subtract from it. In this case, the subtractions are made by cutting the shipping containers as you see with the second-floor side porch.

From the street, there are only subtle hints about the shipping containers underneath the siding used as cladding. But the sides and rear of the home have slightly larger container corrugation examples to catch your eye. Altogether, the eight containers used in the design enclosed a middle area that forms additional interior space.

Inside, you can see several shipping container design touches as well. For instance, the dining room, kitchen, and mudroom make use of the standard container flooring. Other than a glossy finish, the plywood looks just about how it would have while the shipping container was in service, hauling goods across the world.

The exterior, covered porch is similar in its flooring material. And the two-story living area proudly displays the sides of the two upper containers on both sides of the hanging ceiling fan. So while the designers did their best to shield passers-by from the container construction, those who are fortunate enough to enter into the home can clearly see elements of the shipping containers throughout the house.

High-end finishes and touches were used throughout this container house, such as quartz countertops, zoned electric hot water heaters, and premium cabinets. And thanks to the spray foam insulation, utility bills should be reasonable despite the plentiful windows.

In all, this container home, plus its next-door twin, has done much to put Royal Oak on the map as a shipping container housing mecca. For prospective container homeowners who want a house that takes advantage of shipping container without being dominated by them, this home is a great example to study and learn from.