It started with one container — and a different idea of home.
When we decided to try living a little differently, one thing became clear fairly early on — we wanted containers.
It wasn’t a random choice, nor was it purely practical.
We had first become fascinated by container homes while travelling through the United States. We loved their simplicity, their industrial origins, and the idea that something so ordinary could be given a second life and become a home.
There was another, much more practical reason too.
We wanted everything to happen relatively quickly.
We knew very little about construction — and, to be honest, we weren’t particularly interested in spending the next several years becoming experts in building a conventional house.
We wanted to start living.
And that’s how we found BLOKKI.
We thought we already had a plan
We arrived at our first meeting with a fairly clear idea.
We had chosen one of BLOKKI’s existing catalogue projects and thought that was more or less it.
One project. One container home. One plan.
Then BLOKKI came to see our land.
And that was when things started to change.
Looking at the place, they suggested something we hadn’t really considered before: perhaps we didn’t need to have one container house at all.
Maybe there could be several smaller, separate modules — little houses placed across the land, each with a slightly different purpose, but together forming one home.
Suddenly, it made sense.
Not just on paper, but here.
From a catalogue project to something of our own
Around that time, we also met Zdeňka Zlatová.
In those very early days, she helped us with much more than simply choosing containers.
She patiently explained the possibilities, showed us different solutions, recommended what made sense and pointed out things we would never have thought about ourselves.
Little by little, the catalogue project we had originally chosen began turning into something much more personal.
The first 25 square metres were still supposed to be mainly temporary accommodation.
A place to live while we worked out what would come next.
At the time, we had no idea that those few square metres would become the beginning of a much bigger change. We ended up living there much longer than originally planned — and learned surprisingly quickly what living, working and simply existing in 25 square metres actually means.
→ [Read more about our lilfe in the first 25 m²]
Making it ours
Slowly, the empty container started becoming a home.
There were walls to paint, furniture to assemble and countless small decisions to make.
And, as it turns out, some decisions lasted longer than others.
The dark bedroom wall, for example, survived.
The rest… not quite.
Over time, things changed. We changed them, moved them, replaced them and occasionally realised that our first idea wasn’t necessarily our best one.
But that was part of it.
We weren’t simply moving into a finished house.
We were slowly figuring out what home meant to us.
Temporary has a funny way of becoming permanent
Those first 25 square metres were never supposed to be the whole story.
But we didn’t know quite how much would grow from them.
Over time, more containers followed. Then came the garden, terraces, green roofs and countless smaller projects — many of which we eventually started creating ourselves.
The temporary solution became a home.
And the place where we thought we would live for a while gradually became a way of life we had chosen.
Even those original 25 square metres continued to change with us.
At various points, the same small space had to accommodate everyday life, work, evenings at home — and apparently, at one point, a treadmill and kettlebells too.
Small spaces have a way of making you reconsider what you actually need.
And what you can somehow find room for anyway.
Something else we never planned
Looking back, the containers weren’t the only unexpected thing that came out of those first meetings.
Somewhere between visits to the land, endless questions, changing plans and all those early decisions, something else quietly happened.
A friendship with Zdeňka that has lasted to this day.
That wasn’t part of the plan either.
We had gone looking for someone who could help us build a container home. We certainly hadn’t expected that years later, one of the people we met at the very beginning would still be part of our lives.
Perhaps that is one of the things we like most about looking back at how all of this started.
Some of the best things that came from those days were never in the drawings.
BLOKKI already had its own story and experience with container living when we found them. But they entered ours at a moment that ultimately determined much more than simply who would manufacture and deliver our containers.
We went to them with the idea of one catalogue house.
We left with the thought that perhaps there could be more.
At the time, we had no idea where that idea would take us.
Or what else would come with it.
And we certainly didn’t know that one day it would have a name.
Six Blocks.
