A very fine example of shipping container architecture.

by The REJIGIT Blog


February 2020

As at March of 2019, Manhattan based MB Architecture completed an outstanding prefabricated construction project located in the village of Amagansett in East Hampton (part of the East End of Long Island in Suffolk County, New York). The 167 sq.m. (1,800 sq.ft.) shipping container home focuses on indoor/outdoor living and was cleverly designed to wrap around a standing oak tree.

Manhattan based MB Architecture was founded by Maziar Behrooz who is a graduate of Tulane and Cornell Schools of Architecture and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. He is an Advisory Board Member at the Tulane School of Architecture, a guest curator at the Parrish Museum of Art and a member of the American Institute of Architects - Peconic chapter of which he is a past president.

The home, known as the Amagansett Modular House, is modelled on MB Architecture’s Insta-House which is a scalable, prefabricated design comprising four 40ft shipping containers which can be stacked together. The complex structural design is the outcome of ten years of research and prototyping by MB Architecture.

In this case, the architects expanded on their standard Insta-House design by way of an additional 40ft container on the north side connected to the main double-height volume via a glassed-in walkway and a half of a 20ft container which hangs off the second floor, all of which forms the four bedroom, three bathroom Amagansett Modular House.

The structural design of the 10ft pop-out on the second level is quite unique. There are no supporting beams and it looks as if it is afloat, Technically it is not a cantilever and is structured from roof level and held back under tension down to foundation level on the opposite side. It is a structural innovation utilising the inherent structural strength of shipping containers.

Containers were prefabricated off-site before being trucked to the site and installed within two days. The fit-out, glassed-in walkway, landscaping work and pool were added after structural work was completed.