Casa Incubo

Casa Incubo, or Incubo House, is a beautiful container home in Costa Rica. The name Incubo comes from the word ‘incubator’, as the home was intended as a location to inspire creativity and collaboration.

A few miles northwest of San Jose, Costa Rica is the neighborhood of Guachipelin. There the owner, a photographer, wanted to build a structure that transcended any one purpose. The building would serve as not only a home but an art gallery, meeting place, and work studio. In short, the owner wanted a place to bring together work and play; personal and professional.

Achieving that meant segmenting the home into both public and private areas. The designer achieved that by stacking and orienting a total of eight 40-foot containers with a large gap in between two parallel banks. With a roof placed over the gap, the containers formed the long sides of the space.

Glass and a massive garage door were used to encapsulate the short sides of the open room. The end result is a huge, open space with soaring ceilings and about 1000 square feet of floor area. Given the owner’s profession as a photographer, this expansive area full of natural light is the perfect place to work.

But the central, open room also has an additional function. The other areas of the home, both public and private, all tie into the main area, allowing it to not only share light but cross-ventilation of air. This is especially true when the massive garage door on one end of the room is opened.

The remainder of the ground floor includes the office, art gallery, kitchen, dining room, small half bathroom, and of course the expansive outdoor patio. Upstairs on the second level are the two bedrooms with private bathrooms along with a studio space.

The larger bedroom has access to an outdoor walkway overlooking the patio below. From the walkway, you can choose to descend a fireman’s pole down to the ground level or climb a staircase up to the rooftop terrace.

The rooftop space is really something special. Lined with green artificial turf and partially covered with a flowing fabric canopy, it’s simultaneously a garden, a sun deck, an outdoor yoga studio, and an entertainment venue. 

But even when you’re indoors, it feels like you’re outside. The north and west sides of the home are where the vast majority of the windows are located, focusing on the giant cedar tree surrounded by the patio. More on that tree in a bit!

An interesting feature on many of the windows is moveable bamboo panels that help reduce heat gain while allowing some indirect light to get through. Along with the sizable roof overhangs, this helps keep the home relatively cool in the warm summer months without using air conditioning. And, because of the natural lighting, the home doesn’t even need to turn on its LED lights until the nighttime.

The home’s sustainable features don’t end there, however. The sloping roof on the center area leads to a rainwater collection system for irrigation and toilets. The home was set up to use solar panels as a way to partially offset electricity usage. And solar power is also used to heat the domestic hot water, using solar-thermal collectors.

Speaking of materials, let’s revisit that large cedar tree we previously mentioned. Almost every room in the home is designed to have a view of the tree, making it a formative part of the home’s design. But it doesn’t end there.

During the home’s construction, several limbs of the tree needed to be trimmed. The limbs were later milled into lumber and repurposed as dining table legs, stair treads, and other home features.

And while it’s not technically wood, the flooring in most of the container-based areas of the home was made with warm bamboo, a resilient, sustainable material choice. The walls are mostly traditional gypsum board, save for the exposed areas of the container you see in some rooms. 

Lest you think the palette of the home is too boring, there are a few sprinkles of color and luxury. Take the creative artwork the gallery, or the bold sofa in the central living area: both bring life to spaces that might otherwise feel a bit cold.

In the kitchen, the modern, white cabinets are contrasted with a quartz countertop and wooden breakfast bar. It’s a good example of the home’s overall aesthetic: modern industrial minimalism mixed with colorful naturalism.

It’s a blend we love, not just for its appearance, but for its practicality and sustainability. When the project was complete, the designer estimated that things to some of the steps and features we’ve noted above, the home not only reduced overall CO2 emissions by 20%, it also reduced the construction time by roughly the same amount. That’s what we call a win-win for shipping container construction!