Prince Road Container House

When Rob DePiazza’s home of over thirty years was severely damaged by a fallen oak tree thanks to Hurricane Irma in 2017, he decided to make lemonade out of the lemons he found himself holding. Seeing the opportunity to reinvent his own approach to housing, he undertook the task of building a DIY shipping container home.

With his lot just a few hundred feet from the Matanzas River, Rob’s original house experienced several feet of storm surge associated with the hurricane, in addition to the heavy winds. It’s a tricky place to build a house, certainly beautiful, but highly exposed to the whims of mother nature.

Rebuilding in the exact same place meant really thinking about how to resist future flooding, storm surge, and high wind events. Strong shipping containers were seen as a resilient building block upon which to base the home’s design. And it didn’t hurt that Rob had some exciting ideas about making his new container home into what is effectively a living art installation. Rob’s container home is large, bold, and unique in ways that we’ll explain over the course of this article. 

The home is surprisingly simple in its design, with a couple of small twists. Nine 40 foot containers were used, and eight of them were essentially stacked on top of each other, parallel to one another.

However, the design made strategic use of negative space by placing the eight containers around empty spaces that were the size of containers. Looking at some of the front-facing pictures will help, but we’ll try to explain.

On the ground level, two containers were placed on the foundation, separated from each other by 16 feet, which is the width of two containers. These two containers are for storage, with the space between them used as a breezeway and carport.

The second level is home to three containers. One is placed immediately over one of the ground floor containers, while the other two are resting on top of the breezeway thanks to welded beams attached to the upper corners of the two ground floor containers. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that there was space for four containers, but he only placed three on this second level. That’s because the negative space where a fourth container could sit is instead reserved for a covered porch.

Finally, there’s the third level. The third level also has three containers placed parallel and adjacent to each other, this time, shifted in the other direction so that one of them covers the void taken by the porch on the second level. One other detail that will be important in just a minute is that one of these three third-floor containers was actually placed upside down, with the floor facing the sky.

While the stacking and negative spaces created a very creative shape, it actually isn’t such a huge structural challenge as you might think. All eight containers are parallel to each other, with their ends flush. The main modifications are columns on the second level to support the third-floor container that sits above the porch, and the previously mentioned beams on the ground level that support the middle containers above. Otherwise, the corners of all eight containers are either touching or directly above the corners of a container below.

If you were paying attention earlier, you’ll notice that we’ve left out the last, ninth container. A quick glance at the exterior of the home makes it clear where that last container was used. Set at an upward angle, this container is essentially a shade structure for the exterior staircase used to access the home. The staircase actually proceeds through a large cut in the floor of the container that holds the landing that opens to the second-floor porch and the home’s entrance.

Another thing that you might have noticed is that while the home uses nine 40 foot shipping containers, it only has roughly 1600 square feet of living space. Well, in order to preserve the home in case of future flooding, the home actually begins on the second level. The two ground floor containers are just used for storage and aren’t part of the floor space.

Furthermore, the third-floor container that was placed upside down was oriented that way in order to make a double-height open space in the living area. The floor of a shipping container is structural while the ceiling is not, so it was easier to turn this container upside down and remove the ceiling, rather than remove the entirety of the floor. The end result is an interior part of the house with 16+ foot ceilings, save for a small section of loft.

Lastly, the container used as the exterior staircase shade structure doesn’t have any living space inside of it. It’s simply used as an accent piece, and if the extreme angle with which it was placed wasn’t enough, the owner has a bright mural painted across the entire side to further catch your attention.

So, that explains how a home with nine shipping containers only actually used five of them for living space, which equates to 1600 square feet of living area (5 times 320 square feet). However, if you wanted to count the second-floor porch, the two ground-floor containers, and the carport, you’d have another 1600 square feet to add to the total!

The interior of the home is just as unique as the exterior, if not more so. There was basically no effort given toward hiding that this was a container home, with exposed corrugated steel container walls in almost every room. Much of the flooring in the home is simply the container’s existing flooring, lightly refinished. And notice how the ceiling of the double-height living room is actually the exposed plywood floors of the upside-down container above.

The owner and designer used a variety of materials and brightly contrasting colors in the paint, cabinetry, and even interior decorating. Almost everywhere you look is something that catches your eye.

Examples include the multicolored tile pattern in the non-master shower, the colorful kitchen cabinets, and the laminated wood interior stair treads. It’s a combination of a creative eye and a green thumb to source and use objects and finishes that may not necessarily appear to go together, but somehow actually do in the finished product.

Unique and luxurious touches are found throughout the furnishings as well, from a historic 1950’s jukebox, to a six-burner gas range from Viking, to an antique restaurant booth for dining.

As to the floorplan, the majority of the living space of the home is spread across the three containers on the second level. Here you’ll find the kitchen, dining area, living room, full bathroom, and two small bedrooms. There’s also that covered porch that is the same size as a container, 320 square feet.

Upstairs on the third floor is the exclusive domain of the master suite. There’s the bedroom, bathroom, and a combination office and seating area that even has an indoor window looking down into the living area below. The master suite takes up the entirety of the two containers here, excluding the third container that is upside down and has only the small loft that serves as the stairway landing.

It’s clear that a house as creative and striking as this one must be owned by someone with similar attributes. Rob’s profession as an art collector and gallery owner surely had an effect on his willingness to embrace the potential of shipping container construction as a way to showcase his personality via his home.

But we also love that the home is an example of a man being driven by a vision to create something out of nothing, solving the inevitable issues that come with a container house, and overcoming all the related difficulties and setbacks to create something that is really inspiring. While it took him about 30 months of almost daily on-site work to build, we really admire the result.

The home is so inspiring in fact, that Rob ultimately decided to start renting the home out on Airbnb on occasion. So if you find yourself in North Florida, or just want to see a really exciting example of a DIY container home, you can see this one live and in person with an overnight stay.