Sketchy Plans

Rather than to try my hand at drawing up a concept of my own Cargotecture  (and ending up with a pile of crumbled pieces of paper),  I sought to use some free CAD software.   

While I consider myself pretty computer adept, I struggled with the trial software to get it to rotate objects.  Still, I was able to draw up a concept of the home that I have in mind.  I would not want an architect to dutifuly build off of these sketchy plans, lest I mistakenly construct an 18 inch replica of Stonehenge ala  "This is Spinal Tap".  

"This Is Spinal Tap" (1982) Stonehenge concert scene

My inability to rotate objects meant that I could not accurately show the notion of having most of the kitchen go against the wall of the guest wing. Moreover, I could not insert closets, most notieably lacking a coat closet in the formal front.

I also did not place where I would want a pantry, laundry area and a WC/Powder Room/ (or possibly a Wet Room), nor did it include the storage areas at the rear of each wing. 

Why Should I Contain Myself?

In anticipation of being bought out of my urban townhouse, I wanted to consider creating a new dwelling.  Considering my state in life, my priorities are to design something frugally and encourages downsizing of "junk" while allowing for aging in place and that will be low maintenance.

Tiny Houses certainly force people to live simply, often for the trade off of being mobile. I do not envisage that being conducive to our life style, Yet I believe that some of the space saving techniques could be quite useful.

Container homes in their simplest form are akin to a Tiny House without the ready mobility.  There are some designs which fuse together containers.  This is especially useful to circumvent the narrow 7.5" interior width of most cargo containers.  As far as I have seen, when a project fuses together containers, it becomes significantly more costly.  A 640 sf house would be too small per se.  A 1280 sf plan would be more than enough but for the engineering involved, it might rival the cost of a regular stick home.

My initial notion of "Cargotecture" was inspired by a DIY TV episode of Contain-able  of a modern farmhouse. 

Jon and Kristen Meier's Contain-able Modern Farmhouse

Jon and Kristen Meier's design had a great exterior aesthetic, good flow of space and the covered breezeway gave quite a bit of living space for a cargo container based abode.    Schematically, it looks like a fat "H" using parallel containers connected by an "A" frame.  

For us, this "Fat H" concept seems like the most practical and economical scheme for building a forever house to walk into the sunset of life.