Greetings from Slovenia! 🙂

2+ Weekend House is a small modern home located in Trebnje, Slovenia. Designed by Jure Kotnik Arhitekt, the house is composed of two specially manufactured containers that create a 300 square foot, two-level living unit. The aim of the designers was to address the high prices of real estate and produce a dwelling which would be affordable and functional (and given the exterior finish, perhaps we could add funky). There are some big benefits to this type of construction: very low end-price compared to traditionally built houses, assembled within a few days, easy to move and eco-friendly to name a few.

ConHouse is involved in the development and manufacture of containers that are specifically designed for use as houses and office spaces. Prior to ConHouse, projects involving container homes had to be built using standard cargo containers, which often do not easily lend themselves to being a home.

The 2+ mini housing unit consists of two containers placed on top of one another, but perpendicular in alignment. The home has quite a modern, almost minimalist aesthetic to it from the exterior, but this is softened on the inside through the choice colors and fixtures. The upper container that projects outwards creates a shaded, sheltered area, whereas the lower containers ceiling acts as a terrace for the first floor.

Container homes offer new areas for architects and designers to explore, and could be possibly a solution to various housing issues.

Week End House 2+ by Jure Kotnik Architect:

“Sky high prices of real estate in the contemporary world have stimulated the search for and development of alternative housing solutions. One such attempt is the ConHouse system of small-size housing container units, which takes the housing/office ISO container to the next evolutionary level. As opposed to the other container projects, which mostly feed on the excess of available cargo containers, ConHouse pushes the development of containers manufactured especially for housing and office purposes.

Even though the past 20 years have significantly changed the face of architecture, the basic form of these containers has remained the same. The ConHouse system now upgrades them to enable a quality of living comparable to classical housing. This is achieved mainly through rationally designed ground plans, carefully selected materials, a well-lit interior and the customized outer appearance of individual units. By enabling its occupants to coshape their compound unit according to their particular needs, ConHouse takes after the inventive automobile industry, where car owners can choose the components they desire, and after the IKEA-developed winning recipe of interior design.

The 2+ is a two-level mini housing unit composed of two containers perpendicular to each other. It shows that a minimal number of containers combined in an innovative fashion offers fresh yet functional architectural solutions. The upper container provides a projecting roof above the entrance as well as serves to shelter the back terrace. The ceiling of the bottom container is also a terrace of the first floor.

The pink-dotted façade illustrates the wide range of possibilities for tailor-made exteriors, the choice of which is as simple as deciding about which mobile phone cover to put on. The system’s modular nature enables containers to be added to or subtracted from the compound as needed, so that the ConHouse can grow or contract depending on the actual spatial needs of the people using it. Lower prices of such live/work units make them competitive as compared to traditional housing and are intended to increase the number of home-owners, who can then use the extra cash to expand their living space or invest more into interior design.”