Uploaded December 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"Blind adoration without critique is dangerous"
Chapters:
0:00 Starburst House in Joshua Tree
1:20 Balance in successful design
2:15 Program layout
3:37 Invisible house
4:40 Structural concerns
5:53 Wastefulness of architecture
6:37 Utilities
7:13 Nikola Corporation
The Starburst house has captured the imagination of people around the world and has become a familiar sight on social media. Even though it hasn’t been built yet, it was listed for a whopping $3.5 million this week. It’s described as a 3 bedroom, 3 bath house totalling 2,112 square feet. It will sit on 22.5 acres of land at the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.
The house was designed by a London-based architecture firm, Whitaker Studio over 3 years ago for Chris and Roberta Hanley who are movie producers in Hollywood. It’s supposed to be built next year, in 2021.The sliced containers sticking out at various angles are “view portals” that frame views of the desert and the sky.
Successful architecture and design finds a balance between the practical and the theoretical, the scientific and the artistic, the pragmatic and the whimsical. This house is too impractical, it doesn’t achieve that healthy balance.
The programmatic layout of the interior spaces. These renderings of the bedroom show a large bed stretched out to the entire width of the container. The only way to access the bed is to climb over the headboard. In 2015, the architect designed this conceptual office building in Germany. Each container held desks and the central space was a meeting area. The design was simply picked up, painted white, and dropped in Joshua Tree as a house. The needs of an office space are very different to a home. The design wasn’t changed when the program changed.
The owners who commissioned this building, Chris and Roberta Hanley built the famous “Invisible House” in an adjacent 90 acre plot of land. This long, slender steel-frame house is clad in mirrored, tempered glass. Reflecting nature in the mirrored façade is an acknowledgement that nature came first, it takes precedence over the man-made. The building tries to disappear in the landscape, it’s more respectful of the surrounding desert.
The structure of the building. The only structural parts of the shipping container are the frame and the end supports. The entire container performs as a system, the moment you cut a hole in the side walls or slice the end off, the entire container loses structural integrity and is going to twist. It’s pretty obvious that the “container aesthetic” is the only thing that matters in this design because the units are not being used in the correct manner. One might as well build a structural steel frame and clad it in corrugated metal siding to mimic containers.
The wastefulness of architecture. Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid are two of the biggest culprits in this regard. Their fanciful designs are powerful and compelling but extremely wasteful. They pushed the limits of digital design, explored parametric architecture and set an example for designers around the world. They essentially ushered in a new era of architecture. This Starburst house is wasteful without a purpose.
The design also completely ignores utilities. Electricity, water, septic tanks, etc. One rendering shows a small solar panel array that doubles as shade for a car. That’s it. Benjamin Uyeda’s Modern Home Project shows the realities of building a shipping container home in Joshua Tree. There’s a relationship between the above ground septic system and the home itself.
I’m not trying to condemn the architect and owners and I don’t have a personal vendetta against shipping container homes. I just think a healthy discussion of the practicality of this house is important. When making this video, I kept thinking about Nikola Corporation. They reached a $13 billion valuation in August of this year based on renderings, hypothetical designs, and a whole lot of hype, not on actual products. They are now under investigation over securities fraud allegations. Blind adoration without critique is dangerous. We have to look past the pretty pictures, dive into the details, analyze them, and then form our opinions whether they are for or against a topic.
--------------------
SOURCES:
whitakerstudio.co.uk
youtube.com/watch?v=Lni4OODogKA&t=568s
Fluffy by Smith The Mister smiththemister.bandcamp.com
Smith The Mister bit.ly/Smith-The-Mister-YT
Free Download / Stream: bit.ly/stm-fluffy
Music promoted by Audio Library youtu.be/OM9G3nyLT_w
---------------------
Disclaimer: This video was created for educational/informational purposes and qualifies as Fair Use. If you are the creator or own the footage featured in this video and have reservations please notify me via Youtube comments or email and I will accommodate you
#shipppingcontainer #containerhomes #milliondollarhomes #joshuatree #architecture #construction
"Blind adoration without critique is dangerous"
Chapters:
0:00 Starburst House in Joshua Tree
1:20 Balance in successful design
2:15 Program layout
3:37 Invisible house
4:40 Structural concerns
5:53 Wastefulness of architecture
6:37 Utilities
7:13 Nikola Corporation
The Starburst house has captured the imagination of people around the world and has become a familiar sight on social media. Even though it hasn’t been built yet, it was listed for a whopping $3.5 million this week. It’s described as a 3 bedroom, 3 bath house totalling 2,112 square feet. It will sit on 22.5 acres of land at the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.
The house was designed by a London-based architecture firm, Whitaker Studio over 3 years ago for Chris and Roberta Hanley who are movie producers in Hollywood. It’s supposed to be built next year, in 2021.The sliced containers sticking out at various angles are “view portals” that frame views of the desert and the sky.
Successful architecture and design finds a balance between the practical and the theoretical, the scientific and the artistic, the pragmatic and the whimsical. This house is too impractical, it doesn’t achieve that healthy balance.
The programmatic layout of the interior spaces. These renderings of the bedroom show a large bed stretched out to the entire width of the container. The only way to access the bed is to climb over the headboard. In 2015, the architect designed this conceptual office building in Germany. Each container held desks and the central space was a meeting area. The design was simply picked up, painted white, and dropped in Joshua Tree as a house. The needs of an office space are very different to a home. The design wasn’t changed when the program changed.
The owners who commissioned this building, Chris and Roberta Hanley built the famous “Invisible House” in an adjacent 90 acre plot of land. This long, slender steel-frame house is clad in mirrored, tempered glass. Reflecting nature in the mirrored façade is an acknowledgement that nature came first, it takes precedence over the man-made. The building tries to disappear in the landscape, it’s more respectful of the surrounding desert.
The structure of the building. The only structural parts of the shipping container are the frame and the end supports. The entire container performs as a system, the moment you cut a hole in the side walls or slice the end off, the entire container loses structural integrity and is going to twist. It’s pretty obvious that the “container aesthetic” is the only thing that matters in this design because the units are not being used in the correct manner. One might as well build a structural steel frame and clad it in corrugated metal siding to mimic containers.
The wastefulness of architecture. Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid are two of the biggest culprits in this regard. Their fanciful designs are powerful and compelling but extremely wasteful. They pushed the limits of digital design, explored parametric architecture and set an example for designers around the world. They essentially ushered in a new era of architecture. This Starburst house is wasteful without a purpose.
The design also completely ignores utilities. Electricity, water, septic tanks, etc. One rendering shows a small solar panel array that doubles as shade for a car. That’s it. Benjamin Uyeda’s Modern Home Project shows the realities of building a shipping container home in Joshua Tree. There’s a relationship between the above ground septic system and the home itself.
I’m not trying to condemn the architect and owners and I don’t have a personal vendetta against shipping container homes. I just think a healthy discussion of the practicality of this house is important. When making this video, I kept thinking about Nikola Corporation. They reached a $13 billion valuation in August of this year based on renderings, hypothetical designs, and a whole lot of hype, not on actual products. They are now under investigation over securities fraud allegations. Blind adoration without critique is dangerous. We have to look past the pretty pictures, dive into the details, analyze them, and then form our opinions whether they are for or against a topic.
--------------------
SOURCES:
whitakerstudio.co.uk
youtube.com/watch?v=Lni4OODogKA&t=568s
Fluffy by Smith The Mister smiththemister.bandcamp.com
Smith The Mister bit.ly/Smith-The-Mister-YT
Free Download / Stream: bit.ly/stm-fluffy
Music promoted by Audio Library youtu.be/OM9G3nyLT_w
---------------------
Disclaimer: This video was created for educational/informational purposes and qualifies as Fair Use. If you are the creator or own the footage featured in this video and have reservations please notify me via Youtube comments or email and I will accommodate you
#shipppingcontainer #containerhomes #milliondollarhomes #joshuatree #architecture #construction
