Hybrid House
California
Ecotechdesign
DESIGNER: Ecotechdesign BUILDER: Ecotechdesign BUILD DATE: 21 April, 2011
LOCATION: Mojave desert, California PHOTO CREDITS: Jack Parsons RATING: 4 Stars
Hybrid House (also known as The Tim Palen Studio at Shadow Mountain) by Ecotechdesign is the vision of Walter Scott Perry, a pioneer in sustainable design and adoptive reuse. With over half a century of experience, a vision to achieve sustainability without putting more burden on planet Earth, Walter designed this magnificent structure using 6 repurposed shipping containers.
This grand home is located in California’ s Joshua Tree Mojave Desert, representing the unification of high-efficiency construction method with smart design prefabrication. The sustainable, recycled, and affordable habitats provided by Ecotechdesign are self labelled as “Uncontained” living.
Build Method
This house was built using 6 high-cube ISO containers with generous square footage. In case you are wondering about the huge glass walls and perforated steel screening, they make this shipping container abode seem even more spacious from the inside and make you feel more connected with nature. It’s a 2nd generation kit-like house and the design is based on the Prius automobile engineering concept:
“combining pre-engineered building and energy conservation with customer design options like flexibility”.
Luxury and top of the line features include a 10,000-gallon steel water tank and a metal shade canopy with integrated steel framing system. This provides extraordinary strength, earthquake, and fire resistance/protection. Other options include greywater water harvesting and storage system, a solar shading system and a green roof.
The inside is lightly finished with exposed container bamboo flooring and open container ceilings without gyprock (drywalling) finishing.
Interbode Thoughts
Large windows, plenty of sunlight, exposure to nature and natural elements within the safety of a steady and long-lasting structure is perfect for its desert location. We like the combination industrial elements like a water tank, high cubes and a shed studio all wrapped in white and silver. Hybrid house is a busy fusion of metal and glass but it works!
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