Manifesto House

Set just outside of Santiago, Chile in the scenic city of Curacavi is the Manifesto House, a container home full of surprises. One look at the cladding and the shape make it clear this is no ordinary shipping container house.

The designers had several goals in mind when creating the Manifesto House: eco-friendly design, open living, and energy efficiency. As you’ll soon find out, they were successful on all fronts.

Let’s first discuss the overall shape of the home. It takes a familiar container home concept and modifies it slightly. We’ve seen a number of container homes that stack two parallel 40 foot containers (separated by a four-foot gap) on top of two 20 ft containers that are perpendicular to the level above. 

Typically, this would form a large rectangular shape with no overhangs. The Manifesto House instead pulls one of those bottom containers out so that the second level 40 foot containers are sitting just on one of its edges instead of the entire container volume.

Doing so creates an expanded form in the profile of the home, and also gives additional room underneath the second-floor containers. To mimic the addition of the home’s profile shape on the second floor, a patio is cantilevered off the other end of the home.

The end result is measured in two ways. First, the profile of the home takes on a shape similar to the letter Z. Second, despite only having 1080 square feet of container space, the home itself has 1760 square feet of interior area.

While some sources state that a single 40-foot container was split in two for the bottom level, instead of using two 20-foot containers, the end result is the same. And given the generally wide availability of 20-foot containers, there’s really no reason to take on this extra work.

Moving on, the second most striking thing about this home is its exterior cladding. The pictures should make it pretty obvious that the builders used dozens of both painted and natural pallets to cover the containers. But why?

The wooden pallets provide shade for the container skin while allowing air to circulate through them, which helps keep the containers and their windows cool. This cladding has slats alternating with open space though, so you can still see through it to the beautiful hills of the area. Additionally, the pallet slats can be rotated to take advantage of the winter sun with warmth is actually desired.

But repurposing wooden pallets is just the beginning of the green decisions made by the home’s designers. For instance, they used cellulose from shredded newspapers and cork for the insulation, and geothermal heat pumps for the active heating and cooling.

Altogether, the home uses 85% percent recycled materials while also using 70% less energy than conventionally constructed homes, which is quite an achievement. The designers purposefully aimed for bio-climatic configurations of these primarily recycled products to help aid in passive cooling and heating.

The interior of the home is dominated by the huge, open space underneath the second-level containers. One of the lower 20-foot containers holds the kitchen, while the other is a dining area and small bathroom. The living area with staircase is in the middle. Both long sides are covered in sliding glass walls that can be opened up onto patios and to access a fresh cross breeze when the pallet curtain walls are raised up.

The second floor is home to two smaller bedrooms with a jack and jill bathroom, plus the master suite. Additionally, there are those large patios on both ends of the second-level space.

With a fairly modest construction cost of about $110,000, this container home offers a lot for a little. The design is chic yet functional, with plenty of room for entertaining and a family. We love the way the sliding doors create a true indoor/outdoor living space on what seems to be an appealing plot of land.