“Looking the part helps get the chance to fill it. But if you fill the part, it matters not if you look it.”
– Malcolm Forbes
Two-thirds of Olsen House is made up of converted shipping containers, while the other third is made up of brick-and-mortar buildings. The brick-and-mortar structure is situated at the center of the home, with the shipping container portions flanking it on either side. These two shipping container areas comprise the more intimate areas of the home: the en-suite bedroom on one side and a guest flat on the other.
To enhance privacy in these locations, cozy courtyards are constructed in front of them. The master bedroom’s en-suite bathroom opens out into the courtyard, which will eventually be landscaped into a Zen garden. The guest flat features a similar courtyard that leads to the kitchen and living area, with the start of built-in seating and flower boxes.
Due to the guest flat’s compact nature, the internal wall partitions do not extend all the way to the ceiling. To enhance the sense of openness in the guest flat, the upper portions of these partitions will be finished with glass.
Shipping containers can present a number of unique challenges when building a house. In the case of Olsen House, the security estate in which it is built stipulated that the shipping containers should be clad in such a way that they could not be recognized as shipping containers from afar. The containers are something that Mr. Olsen, the house owner, prefers to be able to see.
The solution is to use slatted cladding that effectively disguises the shipping containers from a distance, but through which you can still see the containers when you are in close proximity to the walls. The cladding is not only used for aesthetic purposes; it also provides some shading to the container, although most of the insulation comes from the converted solar mirror panels lining the interior of the walls.
With an R-value of 80, these panels are equivalent to 80mm of polystyrene and are well-suited for insulating the container. The metal backs of these insulating panels give an industrial look to the interior and contrast pleasantly with the wooden ceiling in the main bedroom, which is nearing completion.
Shipping containers are not uniformly straight, therefore it is necessary to mount steel frames to the outside of the containers in order to hang the cladding. This also allows the cladding to be mounted without any screws being visible from the outside.
The metal frames will also support the door and window frames later on in the construction process. The door and window frames are constructed from UPVC, which is very durable and thermally efficient, and they will allow double glazing to be installed later.
“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson