Livingston Manor Container Home

The Living Manor Container House is a weekend getaway that is somehow simultaneously unassuming and jaw-dropping. In fact, it was once featured in the New York Times. The simple, relatively small container home makes excellent use of the building site topography to form an impressive design.

The home is owned by Robyn Volker and Anke Irmscher, who bought the six-acre property years ago while living in New York City. It was intended as a retreat to get away from the city, tucked away in the tiny upstate hamlet of Livingston Manor about two hours northwest of Manhattan.

For several years, their visits consisted of time spent in a 250 square foot teepee, but they knew they wanted something larger and more permanent. Finally, in 2009, Volker decided to partner with her neighbor, designer Tim Steele, on a container structure.

This was the early days of shipping container construction, and there weren’t nearly as many examples to emulate. But the designers came up with a plan that was affordable while providing the amenities the couple desired.

The bottom level consists of a 20-foot container set parallel to the side of a hill. Inside is storage and mechanical equipment like a water pump. This container is only accessible from its exterior doors and not from inside the main house.

Set on top of this 20-foot container and perpendicular to it are two 40-foot containers, with their other ends resting on top of the hill. Thanks to the strength of shipping containers, they were able to bridge over this 32-foot wide gap with ease and create a shaded area underneath the house perfect for relaxing in a hammock.

These two larger containers are separated by a 4-foot gap which was enclosed and incorporated into the floorplan of the house. This gave the house itself a size of 800 square feet, with an additional 160 square feet of space in the lower storage container.

The exterior appearance of the house is framed three things, its color, its windows, and its roof. The color was chosen by Volker, who selected an orange marine-grade paint to bring uniformity to the three containers and to boldly proclaim to the world the cargo box origins of the house.

The windows are narrow and spaced randomly around the perimeter of the house, but span nearly floor to ceiling in a way that gently breaks up the horizontal form of the home. They offer beautiful views of the treed property and the Catskill Mountains in the distance.

Finally, the gabled roof was set on top of the containers and formed with galvanized sheet metal to help reflect the sun and shed any water and snow that may fall. It strikingly contrasts with the orange containers underneath.

Inside, the floorplan is straightforward and livable. Some of the container walls were strategically cut to provide additional width for the rooms that open into or across the four-foot gap between the containers. A living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen all find their place, with a fairly open design. Closed-cell foam insulates the walls behind the sheetrock to give this modest home surprising energy efficiency.

The owners chose to mirror the ‘farm industrial’ look that characterized the exterior of the home and the land as they decorated the interior. They juxtaposed items like a farmhouse sink with modern appliances, and a vintage table with Avante-garde chairs.

The design and construction process itself is noteworthy, especially given the prominence of the project. One might think such a famous house came with a large budget and quick turnaround, but that wasn’t the case.

The truth is much more relatable to the average person, as the entire process took about five years from beginning to end. This was so the owners could slowly pay for each phase in cash as finances allowed. It’s a truly inspirational house, not only in its appearance but in its construction.