WFH Container House

The WFH Container House is known by many, and yet not known well. What do we mean? Well, long-time container home fans have likely seen a picture or two of this house, with its interesting design and sloped roof. But most people don’t know the background of the home or the design details. Let’s fix that!

We’ll start with the name. The ‘WFH’ in WFH Container Home stands for World Flex Home. World Flex Home is a Danish entity that created a modular buildings system intended. While the WFH Container House was notably built with shipping containers, the World Flex Home project seems to have moved away from using actual containers as a building medium. Instead, the project now uses prefabricated steel and concrete boxes that are the same size as 20-foot containers.

Still, there is much to be learned from the design and construction of this home. Since it was intended as somewhat of a concept, the designers took some unique approaches that are inspiring container home builders even years later.

One that’s clear from the design of the WFH House is that while it clearly used shipping containers as seen in the construction pictures, the containers themselves were certainly not used as an aesthetic element of the design. Rather, generous cladding and wall surfaces on both the exterior and interior of the home completely cover all traces of the metal shipping containers underneath.

The result is a modern yet minimalist Nordic design theme that is obviously a function of the WFH design project’s origin in Denmark and not the home’s construction in China. And to be clear, while the home was constructed in Wuxi, China (just a few miles west of Shanghia), we don’t know exactly where. Nor do we know if the home is still even there, or if it was moved or disassembled.

However, the current status of the home is somewhat immaterial to our study of it now. We can gain inspiration and ideas from it regardless of where is currently lies thanks to those who maintained good records of the design and construction process.

If you zoom in on some of the construction pictures or drawings, you’ll quickly notice that the WFH home is built with three 40-ft high cube containers. The containers were arranged in a two-plus-one stacked configuration with a roughly 16-foot gap in between the two parallel container stacks.

Prefabricated flooring elements were used to attach the bottom two containers together, creating a large open space on the ground floor that’s roughly 16 ft by 40 ft and holds the kitchen, dining, and living area. Each end of the space that isn’t adjacent to a container wall is instead completely filled with sliding glass doors that can completely open to bring the outdoors in.

One of the first-floor containers holds an entrance corridor, an alcove that supplements the dining room, and a bedroom. The other ground-floor container holds a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen appliances, and utility closet.

Upstairs is where the third container lies. It holds a third bedroom as well as a flex space that can be used as a home office, child’s playroom, game room, etc. Finally is the upstairs stair landing, which is made from prefabricated flooring modules like those used in the ground floor open space.

This stair landing is a roughly 12 ft by 16 ft space, with railing on both sides that overlook the open space below. It serves as somewhat of a loft, and you can bet that it would be a favorite place to read a book or relax. It places you above the activity and commotion that might be happening below, but still within earshot.

Covering all of this is a sloping roof that connects the one upper containers to the opposing ground floor container. Steel beams serve as rafters between the two containers, which were then overlaid with additional prefabricated modules. Unlike the ones used for the floor, these modules have skylights as well as the requisite insulation. Additionally, the exterior of the roof uses a green roof supplemented with a large solar panel instead of a corrugated steel roof that you might expect.

The exterior sides of the home make us of a warm, natural bamboo cladding that makes the home appear anything but industrial. The cladding is attached to the containers with a system of wooden stud-like elements that are slightly over 12 inches thick. This expansive gap was then filled with insulation, giving the home a significant R-value.

The overall feel of the home is incredibly airy and spacious thanks to the generous use of windows, the large sliding doors, and the double-height open space. So even though this container home is just under 2000 square feet of floor space, it feels much larger.

So what ideas or information can we glean from the WFH Container Home? We love how through the use of the downstairs open space and upstairs landing area, a large home was created that eliminates space-wasting hallways.

By placing the mechanical features, closets, doors, and built-in furniture inside the three containers, the most difficult parts of the construction are can be completed offsite. The on-site work is essentially hooking up utilities, adding the flooring between the containers, the roof above, and the front and back walls.

The last thing worth noting is the configuration and orientation of the shipping containers. While the house does have stacking involved, the two containers are stacked directly on top of each other with all corners matching up with one another. Then allows for a continuous load path through the corner columns and eliminates a lot of structural analysis and modifications.