Container Vacation House, the Winners

Edited by: Eugenia Gotti – Architecture Department Editor –

Proofreading: Bianca Baroni

Where : Sydney, Australia

Artworks: Competition for a Container Vacation House, by AC-CA

The aim of this International Competition was to design Container Vacation House overlooking the Bondi Beach waterfront in Sydney using used freight container.
The city is built on hills surrounding Port Jackson which is commonly known as Sydney Harbour, where the iconic Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge feature prominently. The hinterland of the metropolitan area is surrounded by national parks, and the coastal regions feature many bays, rivers, inlets and beaches including the famous Bondi Beach and Manly Beach.

The word “contain” comes from Latin verb “continere” meaning to hold together, to surround or to store. A container is a vessel that surrounds a usable volume of space and thus defines the spacial boundary between interior and exterior.

The Jury was composed by the French architect Juliette Sohier , the architect Jason Trisley from Austialia and the Danish architect Mads Møller. They fromed a shortlisted competiotion entries and selected the competition winners form a total of 307 proposal evaluated.

The winner is the Czech Republic architect Karim Hassayoune .
The jury said: “The elegant juxtaposition of shipping containers and horizontal timber planes creates a very simple building that reflects a very positive emotional space and experience.
There isan element of surprise within this project even as it attempts to retain and stay true to the container DNA is something that excited the panel.”

The second prize goes to Eunjin Koh and Jonghyun Kim from South Korea
The jury said: “The originality of the architecture presented by this project with its uneven, rawness of the creased and wrinkled roof plane and deconstruction as a mimesis to the adjacent rugged sandstone cliff rocks results in an interesting concept. ”

Third prize for a team from Australia composed by Andrew Nicolle and James Moulder .
The jury said: “The ingenious proposition of reusing crumpled shipping containers has led to a unique solution, full of complexity that would be a joy to explore. It is an organic maze, full of playfulness and the original introduction of the container mould with the texture of the profiled metal container skin formwork. This resulted in transforming an otherwise monolithic low CO2 white concrete formwork into a series of delicate sculptural interior spaces. ”

Another interesting idea comes from Paul Dosanjh and Oliver Hessian    from  Australia and Son Insung from South Korea, honorables mentions.

We are waiting to find out the solutions proposed for Architecture School Tower
, in Dubay, which is the next competition by AC-CA.

@EugeniaGotti