Värmdö Container House

The Värmdö Container House is a beautiful container home just east of Stockholm, Sweden in the municipality of Värmdö. This container house is built on the southern shore of a tiny lake called Hemmestaträsket.

But before we get into the details of the home, let’s talk about the people who built it. The owners, Linda and Thomas, were very intentional about the design and construction of their container home.

Their fascination with container construction began with a shared love of vintage, customized American cars and an appreciation for industrial design. Linda was already a fan of container cargotecture and had assembled an impressive collection of inspirational container home pictures before they even committed to using them for their own home.

Thomas had some mechanic skills, and Linda’s father had welding experience, so a DIY project seemed doable. And bringing their three children along for the ride sounded like a great way to bring them together as a family.

The couple also had an interest in sustainability and environmentalism in other areas of their daily lives, so containers felt like a good match there as well. And as we’ll discuss in a minute, containers were also the perfect fit for their specific build site.

Finding a Location for their Container Home

The family was living in a townhouse closer to Stockholm in Nacka but felt they were outgrowing the space. Moving a little further outside of Stockholm offered them more choices for suitable land plots.

Eventually, they found the lakeside plot they now live on. But it had some challenges.

The site sloped dramatically downward toward the lake, with no flat spots large enough to build a home. Even worse, much of the site was rocky and formed a gully that channeled rainwater down into the lake.

With local regulations that prohibited rock demolition, the site was nearly unbuildable. In fact, previous owners of the land had tried and failed to get a building permit for other designs.

But, containers presented another option. Rather than try to flatten the land underneath, a container house could float above, bridging across the high points in a way other traditionally built structures could not. 

Designing their Container Home

With a general vision in mind, Linda and Thomas connected with architect Måns Tham in 2015 to start designing their dream container home. He had never designed a container home, and in fact, there weren’t really any completed containers homes in all of Sweden at the time either.

The work of designing the container house was clearly going to be challenging with no examples to point to or case studies to learn from. But it was also an opportunity to do something that had never been done before and really exceed everyone’s expectations.

Given Sweden’s strict building codes and the couple’s desire to use repurposed materials for as many of the home’s elements as possible, the architect’s assignment was certainly not straightforward. Luckily the guidelines were pretty open.

They wanted a home with a lot of windows to enjoy the view of the lake and trees, a minimalist design theme that incorporated as much built-in storage as possible, and a structure that had a light touch on the topography of the building site. Two of the couple’s three children have ADHD, so they also wanted a home that was quiet and still.

What the architect came up with was a floorplan built on three levels using five 40 ft containers and three 20 ft containers. All the containers were secondhand for a more sustainable project and all were of the high-cube variety.

The ground floor is made from two 20 ft containers and one 40 ft container and is where the main entrance to the home on the front of the house lies. Here, there’s a cozy den with a guest bed, utility room, and main bathroom for the house.

This bathroom includes the laundry room, but more importantly a huge window looking right into the sloping rock face below the house. When it’s raining, you can see water flowing under the house through this window, and when it’s not, you can hear the birds chirping just outside.

A staircase leads you up to the main floor, which is built with four 40 ft containers. Towards the lake, you’ll find the open-plan kitchen, living, and dining areas. Huge windows provide sweeping views of the lake from this slightly elevated perch, and the partially raised ceiling makes the space feel even larger.

Adjacent to the living space, there’s a deck for when you want to dine outdoors or just get some fresh air. This deck is actually in a 20 ft long section of a 40 ft container that had all of its walls and roof removed, leaving just the frame.

Towards the rear of the house on this level are the private spaces. This includes a master bedroom, a large secondary bedroom, then two tiny bedrooms suitable for children. There’s also an additional full bathroom on this level as well. And one of the most stunning features of the home is the sky bridge that connects the home to the rocky hill behind it and the blueberry-filled forest beyond.

Finally, there’s the third level up an additional flight of stairs that is built from a single 20 ft container. Here there’s a small mezzanine perfect for reading a book or looking out even further from the property. While this container is 20 ft long, only about four feet or so of it are dedicated to the mezzanine.

The remaining 16 ft or so of length had the floor removed and in doing so made a double-height space for the living area below. The intent of this container then is at least partially to serve as a lightwell that helps bring additional ambient light down into the interior of the main level on the floor below.

Overall, the design of the home reflects some hallmark Scandinavian traits, with lots of open space, exposed plywood, and simple furniture. The layout is a bit non-traditional with the main bathroom on a different floor from the bedrooms and no ensuite bathrooms.

But we love the views, the poured concrete floors, the creative storage nooks, and the abundant interior light. And it’s nice that they left a couple of exposed corrugated container walls on the interior of the home near the main floor bedrooms to keep the industrial theme from the exterior going. 

The appreciation for the Värmdö Container House’s design extends to professional circles as well. It was nominated for The Young Swedish Architecture Award (Ung Svensk Arkitektur) in 2019 in Arkitektur magazine.

Construction of the Värmdö Container House

As previously mentioned, much of the container home’s construction was completed by Linda, Thomas, and their family. The process took them a bit over three years, during which time they lived on the property in a shed. 

That’s not to say they didn’t have assistance. They hired plumbers, electricians, tilers, and welders at varying points, and also enlisted the help of family members. But the majority of the work was a DIY effort.

When they finally moved inside in March of 2019, the family had a real sense of accomplishment. Not only had they built their dream house, but they’d succeeded in keeping a healthy marriage and a balanced life that wasn’t completely overtaken by the project.

The actual process of building the house was fairly straightforward though slow. Concrete anchors were embedded in the site’s bedrock to support the weight of the shipping containers. A crane was used to hoist the containers into place. And welds were made to tie all of the metal together into one monolithic structure.

Substantial modifications were made to the containers for the windows, wider rooms, the lofted third floor, and the porch on the second floor. The exterior of the containers was painted a muted gray to blend in with the rock.

Insulation was added inside the container walls with a high-enough R-value that the container home is able to maintain to a comfortable temperature throughout the year. And then, the long-tail work of finishing out the interior.

Sustainability in the Värmdö Container House

The personal principles of Linda and Thomas, along with a desire to save money, drove them to try to repurpose as many items in the home as possible. They worked closely with their architect to tweak the home’s design as they found items they could use. A few examples of their efforts include:

• Staircases salvaged from an old restaurant and a military base
• A trash chute repurposed into a laundry chute
• Kitchen cabinets, sinks, and laundry room countertops that were all reused from other projects
• Various timber planks and metal pieces that they upcycled

In the finished home, nothing looks out of place and everything seems to tie together in the muted modernist aesthetic. Congratulations are due to the family for taking such intentional efforts to incorporate these various items that they were able to source.

Just as with the containers themselves, they saved these parts and pieces from going to a landfill and saved themselves quite a bit of money as well. In return, they had to take a little more time and be a little more flexible with their design, but it’s a tradeoff they seem to have been happy to make.

Summary

When it was all said and done, Linda and Thomas ended up spending about SEK 2.3 million ($243k US dollars at 2019 exchange rates) on their incredible shipping container home. This doesn’t include the cost of the plot of the land.

For a large, custom home in a country with frigid winters on a site that was essentially impossible to build on otherwise, that seems pretty reasonable. Their container home is anything but ordinary, and they definitely will have a story to tell for the rest of their lives about building it.

As we always say, container homes aren’t right for every family and every situation. But in this case, on this piece of rocky, sloping land, and with these people involved in the project…containers were perfect.