The modern hzxiaoya sentry box for the artist’s sculptures

After yet another big design website called this a shipping Container House, It is necessary to point out that it is not. It is an architectural allusion; the architects note that Un Dernier Voyage “echoes the long travels made by the containers given up by shipping companies.”

It is all designed in what used to be called high-tech, with exposed structure and mechanical systems in an industrial shipping-container like aesthetic, and is painted up in the same colours as the real shipping container that is the sculpture studio. But it is a container for people, not stuff. Or as the architects note,

The design wanted to follow the brutalist principles of materiality by exposing the metal structure, steel sheets, technical equipments and concrete floor. Outside, the black painted containers appear like monoliths that contrast with the rural landscape.

The home is composed of two containers: one serves for living, while the other is a sculpture workshop. the ‘living container’ is supported by a metal structure that elevates the volume from the ground. the plan is a twenty-meter rectangle by six-meter, widely open to favour a fluid circulation and a flexible interior layout. the bedroom and office are connected to the living room by a wide corridor that allows for the display of sculptures.

It’s really rather nice, a low-key modern Sentry Box for the artist’s sculptures that lets the artwork do the talking. It is quite shipping container-ish in look and feel. But it also rather makes the point once again that if you want decent size spaces designed around people instead of freight, you are better off starting from scratch.