This Shipping Container Home Is the Most Insane Take on Minimalist, Off-Grid Living

The developments of recent years served as fuel for a shift in priorities, which, in turn, paved the way for a rise in popularity of alternative housing solutions. For a million reasons, people wanted – and needed and still need to – to live smaller, preferably in more mobile homes that would allow them to combine the two things popular wisdom says you should never combine in life, business, and pleasure.

Tiny houses, which had been around as a niche trend since the early 2000s, became mainstays, as did mobile homes like van or bus conversions, RVs, and other types of wheeled habitats. And then, there are the container homes, which walk the fine line between a brick-and-mortar home and a mobile one while offering the advantages of easy assembly, reduced costs, and the possibility to go DIY (do it yourself) on the project.

On paper, container homes have some of the biggest advantages of two different lifestyles: they can be moved around on a flatbed trailer, they can be set up within days with minimal ground prep work, and they come with comparatively reduced costs and smaller carbon footprints, which also makes them more sustainable. Granted, they also have some cons, like the more compact and restrictive layout, but these downsides are nothing that can't be worked around with the right amount of outside-of-the-box thinking.

The River Forest Lookout is an excellent example of how creativity comes into play to transform a regular container into not just a home but the most unique, completely off-grid escape. All mobility has been lost in the process, but the view is worth it.

In much simpler words, River Forest Lookout is a compound made up of two containers suspended some 60 feet (18 meters) over the forest floor in Epworth, Georgia, U.S. It's not a container home but a "container tower," where each container has been converted into a specific living area, offering all the creature comforts of home for two people.

One container is the bedroom, kitchen, and lounge, while the other is a full bathroom, and both benefit from spectacular surrounding views thanks to floor-to-ceiling glazing. How's that for a room with a view?

If that's not enough to sweep you off your feet, the Lookout boasts other amenities worthy of a more… grounded retreat. There's a balcony with an outdoor barbecue grill that doubles as alfresco dining room, a rooftop terrace with another two-person lounge and a firepit (firepits on the ground are so yesterday!), a cozy wood-burning stove inside, and a spacious bathroom where you won't feel like you're compromising just for the sake of a nice vacation spot.

Because these are two containers linked by a small platform, the Lookout is able to sidestep the spatial limitations of a standard container home with much gusto. So, instead of the linear layout of a typical container home, you get a space that feels exactly like what it is: an escape into the wilderness, where you can't be reached by the outside world unless you want to. And unless the outside world climbs the stairs to get to you – and hopefully isn't afraid of heights.

Naturally, because of its location, both on an isolated stretch of rural land and high up in the air, the Lookout is completely off-grid. Owner and builder Mark Derenthal completed the "painstaking" project with an eye to sustainability, which just so happened to fit the practical challenges of the home.

The Forest River Lookout is hooked up to a well for water and relies on solar power for electricity. For heating, it relies on the wood-burning stove and wall-mounted propane heaters, and we assume the toilet is a compositing one. No word on the capacity of the solar system, but photos show that the roof of one of the containers is entirely covered in solar cells, so we assume there's enough to run off appliances without keeping a constant eye on the charge levels.

The Forest River Lookout is offered as a rental through one of the most popular platforms of the kind, and it's become quite a hit there, as expected. This is like the grown-up version of a tree house, but rendered off-grid and so much awesomer!

However, even if you're not in Georgia now or plan to be anytime soon, the Forest River Lookout is still a container home worthy of your attention, if only for showing that we're still to reach peak creativity in this niche of the market. So here's a much-needed dose of inspiration or just eye candy, if you're not looking to get into DIY.