Sugarloaf Container Cabin

Just 15 minutes north of Boulder, Colorado on the southern slope of Sugarloaf Mountain, you’ll find this modern container home with its signature sloping roof. Envisioned by an owner who loves both sustainability and the outdoors, this is a cozy container cabin that has some truly incredible views.

The original owner, Kurt Smith, decided he wanted to build with shipping containers after seeing the nearby Nederland Container Home. He loved the idea of having used containers form a substantial portion of the house, which was another facet of his overall goals of energy efficiency, eco-friendly design, and durability.

The container home sits on a five-acre lot at almost 7000 feet above sea level, dotted with a few trees but otherwise open with sweeping views. From this hillside, you can see the Flatiron mountains and the valley holding the city of Boulder. It’s just minutes away from huge expanses of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, with all the adventurous opportunities those public lands offer.

To build a home on a sloping site, the designers faced a choice. They could cut into the hillside then use a retaining wall, they could elevate the home above the ground with piers, or they could use continuous footings attached to foundation walls that lifted the house above the terrain. The latter option was chosen, but other than a small storage area under the porch, there is no basement, and the house’s floorplan is one level.

Three parallel 40-foot containers are used in the design of the home: two containers are paired together and hold both bedrooms along with a jack-and-jill bathroom. The other container is where you’ll find the kitchen, pantry, eating nook, and additional bathroom.

Each bedroom is entered from the living room via a sliding barn door made with reclaimed wood and has beautiful cork flooring. Using the full width of the dual containers gives each bedroom a depth of roughly 16 feet. In both bedrooms, the full end of one container has been removed and placed with an 8-foot-wide, floor-to-ceiling window that gives both natural light and amazing views.

The bathroom between the two bedrooms is shared but private, with no entrance from the living area. It has a huge window with a view to the north, an open shower, and a Japanese soaking tub.

The living area is really the heart of the home. It’s long and wide, with concrete flooring that pairs well with the exposed container walls at the north and south ends of the room. Above, steel beams hold an angled roof that gives a high ceiling complete with clerestory windows on three sides.

One living room feature that deserves attention is the massive fireplace/oven. This unique, woodburning heater from Tulikivi in Finland is made of soapstone and cast iron, weighs over 6000 pounds, and cost well over $10,000.

This heating appliance uses an innovative design that burns wood quickly and then stores and radiates it into the room for hours, yet stays only warm to the touch. It uses comparatively little wood, has very low emissions and ash production, and includes a bake oven on top for pizza night.

Adjacent to the Tulikivi oven is the dining room, with glass sliding door access to the south-facing porch deck. And you’ll also find the kitchen tucked into the third container, including a kitchen island built from cutaway container wall surplus.

One end of the kitchen has a small eating nook with views out a picture frame window while the other end has a walk-in pantry with plenty of food storage. The kitchen itself uses countertops made from PaperStone, a compressed paper and resin material similar to the Ecotop counters featured in the Hampton Beach Box Container Home.

Besides the kitchen, the other end of this third container is the location of the second bathroom that is open to the living room. It sits behind a bold blue door, but don’t confuse it for the even larger yellow entrance door that leads outside to the front porch.

Here at the front of the house, you’ll find a protected cove that includes a firewood storage area and the same Corten steel paneling that covers much of the rest of the home’s exterior. A few steps away down a sidewalk and up a small staircase you’ll find the home’s detached two-car garage. Built with a similar sloping roof and Corten siding as the home itself, the garage matches the overall site well.

Given the owner’s desire for sustainability, it’s worth highlighting some of the home’s many unique features that add to that goal. First, there is the construction of the living room. Here, the walls are made of Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPS), a layered building material consisting of Oriented Strand Board (OSB) sheathing on both sides of a thick, foam insulating core. The SIPs work to ensure that this non-container part of the home is well-insulated, despite its high ceiling and numerous windows.

Next is the large system of photovoltaic solar panels on the roof of the garage that take advantage of the incredible southern exposure. Thanks to mindfully choosing efficient appliances and ample daylighting provided by the windows, the owner is typically able to generate more solar power than the home needs, enabling him to sell a surplus back to the on-grid electrical provider. So while this isn’t an 0ff-grid container home, it does have low grid dependency.

As you can imagine in the Colorado mountains, heating is more of a concern than cooling for most of the year. We’ve already talked about the Tulikivi fireplace in the living room, which is able to warm the whole home. But, a split-unit HVAC system can cool the bedroom wing in exceptionally warm weather, just in case.

All the thoughtful design efforts earned the home a Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Index of 17, considerably lower than a traditionally-build home. So it’s home that not only looks amazing, it performs very well too.

It’s hard to find fault with this mountain-side container cabin. It’s modern yet cozy, open yet efficient. It has jaw-dropping views and world-class access to the amenities of nature. And it clearly showcases how shipping containers can be an important part of a new type of bold, sustainable architecture.