Carroll House

Container homes are generally variations of a rectangular form, but the Carroll House flips that idea on its head. Its containers are aligned, stacked, and then angularly cut to form the profile of this unconventional container house.

The basic idea is simple. Take a regular, 25 ft by 100ft rectangular lot in New York City’s Brooklyn area, specifically the Williamsburg neighborhood. Then line up shipping containers three wide, five high, and two deep. But then, there’s the twist.

Instead of placing the first row of containers are ground level, the structure actually begins with a subterranean parking garage and basement that is accessed from a street-level ramp. To accommodate the ramp, some of the containers are cut at an angle as well. If you’re wondering what the room inside these cut containers could possibly look like with a sloping floor, you might be surprised: it’s a media room, with stadium seating.

The same angle is carried up to the top of the building, where cuts to the containers are again used, starting from the front of the property and sloping to the back. This creates a series of cascading outdoor terrace areas. The cut pieces are reused in other parts of the structure, so it wasn’t a completely wasteful exercise by any means.

The exterior of the home has a uniform, light brown paint color. Such a muted tone stands in stark contrast to the towering height and striking angular cuts of the containers.

Inside, you’ll find a modern, luxuriously appointed home with plenty of public and private spaces. And despite being in the middle of the city, the sloped layout and decks on each level really help to make an outdoor-friendly living style.

The project was definitely one of the first large-scale container homes in the US, and had its share of financing and approval hurdles to overcome. But the actual assembly of the container only took about four days, with additional time for interior work.

With such a bold design, especially with the front cantilevered overhang above the parking ramp, structural engineering was paramount. Designers had to supplement the container walls with struts to achieve this effect, but the resulting design is ground-breaking. There was also plenty of container modifications inside as well, which are arguably most apparent in the open living on the second level.