A few years ago the sustainable housing design firm Infiniski completed yet another awesome shipping container home. Located in Curacaví, Chile the Manifesto House is made from three recycled shipping containers, while it also boasts of a number of other sustainable features. Infiniski prides itself on designing and building homes made from at least 80 percent recycled, repurposed and non-polluting materials, which includes disused containers, as well as railway tracks, forklift palettes and even old bottles.
Manifesto House is a 2-story home measuring 1700-square-feet and it took about 90 days to construct. The ground floor is comprised of a single shipping container, which had been split and separated to create a spacious living and dining area. The gap left by splitting the shipping container was sealed by thermally efficient glass panels, which allows an ample amount of daylight to enter the house while also enlarging the living area beyond the restrictions of a shipping container’s limited size. The large glass sides also allow for natural ventilation of the home.
The other two containers were placed atop the ground floor structure to form the upper level which houses the bedrooms and bathroom, and bridges the gap left by the splitting of the ground floor container. The thermal performance of Manifesto House is improved through the use of adjustable wooden solar shading made of wood from sustainable forest sources on one side. The other side of the home is shaded by forklift pallets, which is a pretty novel use for this repurposed material. The designers envisioned that the pallets could be opened in the winter to allow direct solar radiation to reach the container and heat its metal surfaces, thus providing a natural source of heating within. In the summer the pallets would remain closed to thermally insulate the house and keep the interior cool.
The designers left the interior walls of the container in its original state, which blends in nicely with the wooden finishes on the outside and the glass walls. By stacking the containers the designers also managed to achieve a relatively small footprint for this innovative shipping container home.
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