Dynamic Carpenter's Shop for Home Construction

Hello, my name is Nicholas, and I am a junior in the Bay Area. Inspired by my father, who works as a carpenter in home construction, I designed an efficient and affordable workshop. He was building a house in a remote town called DownieVille and often complained how much time was lost setting up and taking home all of his tools everyday to prevent theft. I designed this structure as a solution to improve the efficiency and quality of life of construction workers and so that it could remain as an auxiliary building after the construction finishes. It was important for me to create something practical for construction, but beautiful enough to remain as a shed, rentable structure, or hobby shop for a cheap price. This design uses shipping containers and lumber common in home construction to create a beautiful and efficient workshop.

Throughout the process, I consulted and took inspiration from carpenters who helped guide me in the design process. I also struggled through learning how to 3D model and made many mistakes along the way. I would like to thank my father and his friend John Trout for their design input and my friend Eitan for helping me with my 3D model.

The first three steps include an overview of my design process and discusses how I came up with this idea and design. If you are not interested please skip to Part 2 of the article.

(2x) 20’ shipping containers (preferably a neutral color for aesthetics)

~80’ 8x8 plywood beam

~352’ 2x4 plywood

(2x) ~16x20 corrugated sheet metal

(2x) ~16x20 0.5” sheet plywood

16’ Roll up door with man door 

(2x) ~9’x8’ 1” custom wood door

(4x) Inset wheels with mounts

(4x) inline wheels

(1x) Metal pipe

(4x) Room led light

(1x) String lights

Shop Build Out 

~100’ 2x4 plywood

~100 sqft 0.5 plywood

(12x) mountable caster wheels

Shed or auxiliary retrofit recommendations 

(3x) Solar panels

(2x) 6’ double doors

This design was created for Autodesk's “Make it Modular Challenge” where participants are challenged to design a structure around a shipping container to fit into one of four categories: Affordable Housing, Covid-era Public Space, Reimagined Outdoor Classroom, or Entrepreneurial Pop-up. My first design was a sustainable affordable housing unit, utilizing the modular, affordable, and eco friendly properties of shipping containers. Here is my initial concept sketch that I presented to my father for notes (pictured above). Immediately, he pointed out some glaring structural flaws. After reviewing the sketch and a lot of research I understood the problems in my design and used that knowledge in my next iteration. 

The main problems I discovered when building livable spaces from shipping containers were: 

1. Structure
2. Cost
3. Modularity

Structure 

The initial concern with its actual strength. Shipping containers are very strong when stacked on top of each other and can form huge towers. However, all of the load bearing strength is in the four corner posts with the rest of the walls being very thin corrugated metal. So when stacked in another orientation, such in my design, the structure is very weak and dangerous. 

Another point of concern is the thin corrugated metal walls. The corrugation makes them incredibly strong, but when holes for doors and windows break up that structure it is no longer stable, and basically just thin sheet metal. This means it would need additional framing to stay strong and safe. 

Cost

After learning so much about the structure of containers, I wondered, is it even possible to insulate them effectively? According to some of the data I found the most effective insulation is a spray on foam, which goes against the goal of sustainability and is more expensive than sustainable options like denim.

So I wondered how much using a container would improve the other goal of affordability. From what I found the average low end home costs about $140 - $175 per square foot, while a designer shipping container home like this design can easily cost $200 per square foot.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Insulation costs: https://hvacseer.com/cost-to-insulate-1500-square-foot-house/

Shipping container prices: https://liveinacontainer.com/how-much-are-shipping-container-homes/

Average home prices: https://homeguide.com/costs/cost-to-build-a-house

Modularity

Finally, I realized if I were to create a house, I would lose an important property of shipping containers, modularity to the necessary foundations. After discarding my old design, I made new goals to take advantage of this unique building material using what I learned. After some brainstorming I realized, what does a shipping container do best? Store goods. With this mindset I could avoid installing cost like insulation or plumbing, avoid the use of permanent foundations, and instead design an unlivable but highly functional space. Soon after I got the idea of designing a pop-up shed that could be converted into a construction area, or wood shop.

I started again by sketching the main layout and design elements I wanted. The main structure was built without necessitating foundations and is essentially, a roof supported by two shipping containers with two cleverly designed doors for security. After I created my initial sketch I began figuring the structure out in more detail by doing research and consulting with my friend John Trout (pictured below). He recommended ways I should reinforce the roof (sketch below) and advised me to use corrugated steel for a cost effective roofing option.

I also starting thinking about how this structure could be built for construction. This lead to important design choices such as keeping the roof frame exposed for wood storage and maximizing open space to accommodate large machines and materials. Included in Johns sketch is a list of essential wood shop machines I should incorporate (sketch below). To design the actual shop inside the containers I took a lot of inspiration from my schools wood shop and assembled a mood board of ideas to use when modeling.

A frame roof reference: https://www.wikihow.com/Frame-a-Roof

Pinterest board: https://pin.it/6zyenzU

This project was my first time using Fusion 360 and thus most of the working time was spent learning and redoing things better. I strongly suggest working through some tutorials on Youtube if you are new because the software is not initially intuitive, but once you get going the workflow gets a lot easier (Coming from Rhino and Blender). I threw together a quick mock up model in Rhino to reference while I worked. After finishing a basic overview tutorial, I watched another about modeling a container which combined gave me confidence to model everything else by myself.

I started off by modeling the initial structure. With the two containers I already modeled I measured out the roof and began creating it as if building it out of actual plywood boards. Through this approach I was very intentional with making the roof connect to the container realistically. When modeling, especially when you are uncomfortable, ALWAYS sketch out any uncertainties. This saved me so much time and made my vision clearer when I was modeling.

Fusion 360 Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK60ROb2RKI

Animation Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_WwW9yquFM

Shipping Container Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5XVg4pcCTw

One limitation I faced, especially when modeling the interior was the limit of editable components that comes the free version of Fusion 360. I ended up creating most of the interior in a single file which made it incredibly difficult to assemble and animate down the line. Another challenge was lighting, Fusion 360 currently doesn't have fantastic support for light sources in the renderer so I used a work around I found online.

Using constant references, I modeled my interior and shop tools separately allowing me to really think about how the structure can best help them function. Some examples of these detailed design choices tailored to specific tools are:

Miter saw: I specifically placed this tool so it could take advantage of the maximum amount of desk space and positioned it perpendicular to the container door for particularly long cuts.

Shop Vac: Placed under the miter saw for easy clean up along with the joiner for space efficiency

Drill Press + Band Saw: Both of these tools are very small so I put them on rolling carts so they can be moved to wherever is most convenient. Especially important in such a small space.

Light Source Workaround: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/how-do-you-simulate-light/m-p/7888633#M23240

This structure accomplishes the goals I have set and embodies a space that can not only be affordably and easily built and destroyed, but also repurposed past its initial use. Shipping containers are an interesting design element because they look and feel sleek and interesting when repurposed. This design largely aims to match the simplicity and practicality of the shipping container visually by using similarly basic elements. I think being able to see the bare structure of the A frame roof is compelling along with the corrugated roof sharing features in the shipping container.

Through this process I learned a lot about how intensive it is to try and design a structure. I strongly recommend anyone interested in how things work to take up 3D modeling. It allows you to see and design from every angle possible in a surprisingly fluid process. I will definitely be working in Fusion 360 more and taking advantage of the flexibility and freedom a parametric design flow allows.

Thank you for reading!