According to DeZeen, a four-home development of shipping container homes designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris is coming to a vacant lot in Oklahoma City. The new development will be called Squirrel Park and is being spearheaded by a developer/client who runs a local restaurant and plans to live in one of the properties. Sixteen shipping containers will be used to construct the two-bedroom homes.
"The owner, who runs a local restaurant where the staff is made up largely of individuals who have been incarcerated, believes in second chances as 'a way of giving back to the community'. This became a guiding principle in the design," said AHMM. "The goal was to take a vacant site that had been a magnet for crime and transform it."
The three family homes not occupied by the developer will be rented at "competitive market rates". Two containers make up the ground floor of each house, with two more cantilevered three meters over one end to create a sheltered porch below and a first-floor terrace off the master bedroom.
Oklahoma has a hot climate, so the steel containers have been painted white to reduce heat gain, while mirrored strips reflect the sun's glare. As the site is low lying, the houses have been raised on pile footings to allow more surface drainage, with planted areas arranged to catch and absorb rainwater runoff.
The area is also prone to tornadoes, so the containers have been reinforced with steel tubes and welded down to embed plates in the foundations.There is also an eight-person tornado shelter located beneath Squirrel Park.
