Architect’s 40′ Shipping Container Home

Meet Dan, an architect who designed, built, and now lives in a high-cube 40-ft shipping container home with his wife, dog, and cat. During the design phase, he focused on not sacrificing comfort while optimizing function. The result is an exceptionally livable, light and airy tiny home. Impressively, Dan did it all for $45,000.

“We actually splurged in a few areas that were important to me because this was going to be a place that we’re going to be living in and also going to be sort of a showpiece for my firm.

One of the areas we opted to spend a little more money on is the windows. The reason for that also was to make the space feel a little larger than it is. In my mind, yeah the windows are expensive but capturing some more of the outside because of it. It’s almost like buying additional square footage, or at least visually it feels that way.”

—Dan, Mesa Architecture Studio

Dan’s 40-ft shipping container home feels much like a stylish, space-efficient studio apartment. Though, he and his wife enjoy more privacy in their bedroom—enclosed on three sides and placed on the opposite side of the house from the living room. It’s a total of 270 square feet with much open floor space and some movable furniture for added floorplan flexibility. What also makes this such a livable tiny home is a large amount of storage. For example, the bedroom has a full-size built-in closet, drawers in the bed frame, and hidden storage inside the raised floor platform.