It wasn’t just architects he reached out to. (Mr. Antonio said he had signed up close to 40 Container House designers, including some fashion designers.) David Salle, the artist, teamed up with Aldo Andreoli, a principal of the Williamsburg architectural firm AA Studio, to design a series of 12-by-24-foot modules with tilted roofs for solar panels, a rainwater collection system and metal wall panels etched with work by Mr. Salle.
The idea, Mr. Dixon said, is that they could be built by anyone in any location. “Having seen a few of the other designs,” he added, “their ability to be built in different locations with different skill sets is limited, whereas mine can be built anywhere by anyone. I think we’ll offer three or four different paneling systems, depending on how hot, cold, windy the site is. Even the frame could be infilled with local building materials, like bricks in London. I don’t know what I could stick in Miami, candy floss?”
Kenny Scharf also received a call. “But I couldn’t get any details or clear answers about the project, so I just gave up,” he said. “It was too vague. He told me he wanted to pair me up with an architect and gave me a whole list and I said, ‘Sure, I’d love to work with Zaha Hadid, but I’d need a contract defining how you go forward and what it would entail.’”
Mr. Salle said he agreed to produce a prototype for Revolution to manufacture that Mr. Salle would then construct on a building site in Marfa, Tex. “We can figure out the business stuff later,” Mr. Salle said. (Mr. Antonio declined to define the terms of his arrangements with the designers.)
“Our response to the project being so vague was to design to that limitation,” said Tom Dixon, the British industrial designer, whose 120-square-foot modules would be constructed of extruded aluminum frames that fit together like Lincoln Logs, with panels of various materials.
The difficulty with the flat-pack model is it doesn’t cross borders very well, Mr. Dixon said. “People have different plugs and building codes, which restrict the use of a universal system for these Container Houses,” he said. “It would be impossible from London to specify a system that works for everybody. So mine is just a frame. I’d be delighted to furnish one or two, but essentially it’s a blank canvas.”
