Recycled Timber Shipping Container Office Fit-out

December 2020

The Container Office has to be one of the most enjoyable projects we’ve ever worked on. We rarely get to design something that we are going to be the end user of - so this was a really exciting process.

The idea came about during the Brickworks days when we had outgrown our original tiny office and needed to spread out. Our future at the Brickworks was uncertain so we decided to design another mobile building that we could take with us - which we did!

Now placed out the front of our new home on Mildura St, it gets used by our design and marketing teams, and for meetings.

PROCESS

Designers - Thor Diesendorf + Anna Murray of Thor’s Hammer

Builder - Thor Diesendorf

Metal fabricators - Dan Lorimer + Artillion

Carpentry & Joinery - Tim Day & Thor’s Hammer

The build was a collaborative process, involving some of our favourite Canberra makers - Dan Lorimer and Geoff Farquhar-Still from Artillion, who did all the metal fabricating, and south-coast carpenter Tim Day, who did the interior fit-out with the Hammer Team.

The design process was a fun journey nutting out the perfect layout and storage design for our needs, incorporating a wood fire, small meeting table, a library and workstations for four people (we popped out one side of the container to give us just enough space) - in a building that was as energy efficient as a shipping container could be!

We used Kingspan insulation panels for the walls and ceiling, set 25mm off the inside of the container walls to create an air gap for extra insulation and to control condensation.

The cantilevered green roof of native plants provides extra shade and insulation above the container where it is really needed.

Double glazed louvre windows keep the industrial look while providing good ventilation and sound and thermal insulation.

The container locks up at night using sliding shutters made out of the wall panels we removed to make the windows. Dan Lorimer fitted some motors to these windows so they all open up at the touch of a switch.

We were keen to exhibit some of our Thor’s Hammer products in the space and included some favourites. The meeting table, shelving and workstations are made in recycled Blackbutt / Dense Browns, the flooring is salvaged Tallowwood from a 1950’s warehouse in Greenacre NSW, which was also used as cladding on the ceiling of the cantilevered green roof, and the little deck out the front is built in our Re-milled Dense Red Decking.

We made a pendant light to hang above the small meeting table, out of a big chunk of recycled Blackbutt - woodturning by Hiroshi Yamaguchi.

These timbers, combined with Hoop Plywood cabinetry and wall cladding and the black framed, double glazed louvre windows, resulted in space we were thrilled to be working out of.