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NARRATOR: There are extreme homes all over the world,
and we're taking you inside some of them
for a personal tour.
The word "extreme" means different things
to different people,
but to these homeowners,
it means dreaming, daring, and innovating.
From construction to completion,
we'll take a close-up look at these spectacular homes
to find out just what makes each of them so extreme.
This house is so glamorous,
even the family dogs have temperature-controlled quarters.
This house is so small, it folds up into a wooden box.
And this house is built to resemble an Egyptian temple.
Exciting shapes, exceptional sizes, and exotic locations --
These are some of the coolest homes around.
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
It's hard to imagine a more glamorous way
of arriving at your own front door than by helicopter.
And that just suits
Florida entertainer and Elvis impersonator Ron Adams.
[ Dog barks ]
Ron and his wife, Joy, have worked for years
in real estate and the entertainment industry.
And Torretta House, on the beachfront at Destin, Florida,
says they've arrived.
This Tuscan-style villa on a gated peninsula stands out
in this formerly modest fishing village
in the panhandle of Florida.
ADAMS: We picked the nicest lot
in the nicest subdivision in the nicest city
in the nicest state in the nicest country of the world,
and that's really how we got started.
I wanted the best of the best,
so we went with a Mediterranean style,
keep it comfortable so it didn't feel like a museum.
NARRATOR: They wanted to build something spectacular
but not so big and palatial that they'd get lost inside.
The kitchen, with its imported Mediterranean dream granite,
is built on a manageable human scale.
All the rooms were designed to be this way.
ADAMS: Yes, it is big. It's 22,000 square feet.
But I didn't want it to feel like a big house.
I wanted it to feel cozy
so that wherever you're at, it felt like you're home.
I compartmentalized it with different seating areas
that made it feel like maybe it was
the house that you grew up in.
NARRATOR: The living room is pure Venetian palazzo,
with Italian marble lining the grand fireplace.
The four faux-marble columns around the seating area
add an impression of grandeur to the entire room.
Everywhere you look, you see plush furnishings and ornaments.
There's artwork throughout Torretta House.
One painting in the family room turns into a big flat-screen TV
with just the brush of a touchpad.
This 31-room house has everything,
from a luxury lift...
to a private cinema...
and a massage room.
There's even a temperature-controlled garage
and specially heated pet rooms,
where the Chihuahuas can come and go as they please.
[ Dog barks ]
One of the most attractive features of the entire villa
is the 1,500-gallon saltwater aquarium.
It's always the subject of conversation.
ADAMS: That seems to be a focal point.
They actually feed the fish from the second floor,
which is off of the massage room.
NARRATOR: The large master suite on the first floor
is a study in European opulence.
But this is Ron's command central.
From here, he can keep an eye on the entire villa.
Nothing escapes his attention.
It controls the heating, the air-conditioning,
the televisions, the security cameras, literally everything.
So from my bedroom,
I can control all the lights in the house,
the blinds in the house,
the security cameras in the house, the security system.
I can watch three security cameras at once.
There's 16 cameras, day/night cameras,
so I can have surveillance over the entire piece of property.
NARRATOR: Knowing your house is secure,
you can relax and take a swim in the pool.
More like a small lake,
it's a spectacular 90-foot stretch of water
with great views anywhere you look.
A waterfall cascades over the bar area,
where guests can swim up for cocktails
while never leaving the water.
And it seems to be the favorite place that you find people
when they come up missing at a pool party.
NARRATOR: The Torretta House is also home
to a fleet of eight cars.
Sometimes, it's really hard
to decide which one to take for a spin.
But if you want to leave the cars behind,
there's always another way to make a spectacular exit.
The problem for the owners of this house
on the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand
was not getting to and from their beach home
but getting their home to and from the beach.
They had a big difficulty -- coastal erosion.
Sea levels are predicted to rise,
so New Zealand authorities don't allow permanent structures
on this part of the coast anymore.
So they built a house designed for a quick escape at any time.
What we did is decided to build the whole thing on sleds
so that if there ever was an issue,
we could hook it to a tractor
and drag it to the back of the site,
or we could load it on a barge and take it away.
NARRATOR: The Sled House looks
extremely modest from the outside,
but it's full of surprises.
The front wall is really a two-story shutter.
Wind it up, and the entire house opens onto the beach.
And the shutter also folds up
into an awning against the sun or the rain.
Inside, this home is a tiny masterpiece.
We made it as small as we could.
And the constant debate we had with our clients was
how small can we make it.
And we ended up with it being essentially only two bodies wide
and a little over two deep.
NARRATOR: At less than 500 square feet, the house is small,
but it's got everything you need to keep a family of five happy.
There's a small wood stove for chilly nights
and a neat galley kitchen.
And then behind here, we've got a little bathroom.
Again, tiny, tiny, tiny.
And that connects with the outside.
So if you're feeling modest, you can close the shutter,
or if you're feeling proud, you're open to the outside.
And it's a house for a couple and their three children.
The kids have essentially their own room
with their own little shutter on their window and the bookcase
and little secret spots
where they can put their goodies in behind.
And the parents sleep in a little loft upstairs.
NARRATOR: Perched above the living space
is a comfortable master bedroom.
The view makes it feel like it's part of the beach.
And above the master
is a roof terrace with panoramas of the bay.
This house is in a size and style common to New Zealand,
where people like to build simply,
often with salvaged materials.
CROSSON: So, we've built it with timber,
and we built it in two boxes, essentially --
the front part timber,
and the back part covered in a flat sheet cladding,
just along the lines of the way
they used to build them in the '50s.
So, available materials, *** it together.
NARRATOR: The exterior siding
is a farmed cypress called macrocarpa,
which weathers to a driftwood gray.
Inside, the walls are lined with pine to warm them up.
The waterworks of the house are simple.
Rainwater for drinking is collected
in gravity tanks at the back.
Human waste is processed by a special worm farm in a tank,
where it's digested and turned into useful compost.
The Sled House has been designed
as a total getaway from city life.
Essentially, the PlayStation is the beach.
I mean, the simple way of life,
much like, I guess, the simplicity of camping.
It's just easy.
We didn't want to get any connections
to that electronic world that we're so geared to.
And, in fact, the kids love it.
You know, what they do is they come down here and they explore
and they make sand castles and do all those things
that, you know, kind of urban kids don't anymore.
And so, yeah, it's another way of life.
NARRATOR: When the family packs up and goes home,
the Sled House can be packed up, too.
It transforms into a simple box
that fits naturally into the seascape
and quietly waits for the return of its owners.
Next, we're heading back to the U.S.,
where, according to its owner, this self-built house
is the shape of the future.
NARRATOR: We're back with more "Extreme Homes."
In the open fields of Two Rivers, Wisconsin,
sits an ultra-modern home
that one man designed and built with his own hands.
I grew up in a house that my father built,
and he built it out of wood,
but it was wood exterior, wood interior,
paneled walls, wood floors, wood ceilings.
I think I had just too much wood.
And I was always intrigued by Egyptology,
and that gave me the idea for leaning walls.
Once I had that idea in my head, I ran with it.
NARRATOR: The Egyptian-style leaning walls
create cooling shadows,
and the many south-facing windows pick up
all the solar potential of the winter sun.
In Wisconsin, it can be
incredibly muggy and humid in the summer
and bitterly cold in the winter.
That's a lot of extreme weather for any house to handle.
And Shane's house is ideally designed for the job,
but that certainly wasn't all he had in mind.
It is very futuristic,
and living in it is like stepping into the future.
NARRATOR: The interiors
are unlike anything you've ever seen.
Each room is more vibrant than the last,
from the cobalt kitchen
to the room dividers that were finished off
in translucent acrylic paint
and illuminated for a colorful glow.
It is very urban inside and outside.
It's kind of a contrast to the natural surroundings.
It's not really something I set out to do.
It just flowed once I got designing.
NARRATOR: Downstairs is the cool blue kitchen,
which shares a space with a small dining room,
surrounded by those translucent screens.
A steel staircase punctured with holes
leads up to a bridge that flies across the open space
under a ceiling painted with clouds.
At one end is a large great room.
At the other is a striking emerald master suite
with its own bathroom.
Although the house looks like a concrete sculpture,
the frame is still made of wood.
It's just hidden inside tightly sealed, heavily insulated walls
that make the house draft-proof.
This is a solar home.
Under the house, there's a radiant heating system
set into 2 1/2 feet of sand,
all kept warm with water heated by solar panels.
Shane's goal was to design a house
as different as possible from the one he grew up in.
This house is such a triumph for its self-taught architect
that most people don't believe he designed it
and then built it with his own bare hands.
BLACK: I tell people that I built the house myself,
and most of them think that means
that I've hired all the contractors.
But I actually did build it.
NARRATOR: In Bangkok, Thailand,
temperatures average a humid 80 degrees
and often climb into the 100s.
So one man came up with a creative way to beat the heat.
Surprisingly, the answer was to build a glass house.
This three-bedroom house
is almost entirely encased in glass,
and every wall is louvered.
There are more than 2,400 separate panes of glass that open,
giving the home a unique self-ventilation system.
Each column of panels opens manually,
so the owners can decide exactly how much breeze they want
flowing through the building and where.
The aluminum window frames, with their tiny gutters,
also work to keep heavy rain from getting in.
The louvered walls rise 30 feet to the ceiling.
They're made of a special glass that reflects light and heat.
That way, the house doesn't turn into an oven.
To enhance the cooling effect,
the architect also installed white tiles on all the floors
and painted the walls an icy pale blue
for a cool psychological suggestion.
The multipaned walls not only create
an air-circulation system,
they also make the house seem larger and grander.
Set in a small forest, the Louver House
is isolated from the neighbors and a nearby factory.
The architect wanted the owners
to live in nature as much as possible.
All that glass enhances the connection.
It all looks ultra-modern,
but there's history on the stairs.
The architect has recycled a rare rosewood
known as chingchan,
picked up from another, much older house in the neighborhood.
The design is mostly about the main atrium and keeping it cool.
The other rooms are more modest in scale.
All have rich, warm hardwood floors.
And this bath is open to the trees,
which provide a natural screen from the rest of the world.
The Louver House is an elegant blend
of modern and traditional methods
of keeping the heat and the rain
right where they belong -- in the jungle.
Next, we're taking you to Morocco,
where a couple bought
an old sweetheart of a house in Marrakech
and brought her back to life.
NARRATOR: Welcome back to "Extreme Homes."
We've seen a house where the cars are treated
as well as the pets...
[ Dog barks ]
...another you can move when the going gets rough...
and a home that transports you to the future.
If this house were a woman,
it would be a hostess who lives to entertain.
Her name -- the Villa Bled Roknine
in Marrakech, Morocco.
Over the years,
world leaders, famous designers, writers, and actors
have all come here to work and play.
The Villa Bled Roknine was once the talk of the town,
but she fell from grace and for decades lay abandoned
on the outskirts of this walled city.
Then a French couple saw the old house and just had to have it.
Welcome to Bled Roknine.
This is my family house.
Nobody's here today but me, so I'll show you the house.
It was abandoned and it was so mysterious.
It was just -- just incredible.
We really went crazy when we saw it,
and we said, "We have to own that place.
It's just so incredible."
NARRATOR: They set out to recapture
the villa's former elegance
and succeeded to admiration.
The villa unites two cultures
in a marriage of convenience and understated luxury.
It stands in Marrakech,
but it looks like it's been transplanted from 1930s Paris.
Everything is from that period.
Even these are from 1930.
When we came in, they were in the door.
As you see, the ceilings are very, very high.
NARRATOR: When the Alaouis first looked around the villa,
they had no idea what extravagance lay in wait
for them on the first floor.
And when we came in the first day,
the house had been abandoned for 20 years,
and all the doors were closed.
We had keys.
And each time we opened a door,
we didn't know what was behind it.
But it was a surprise. You're gonna understand why now.
NARRATOR: What they discovered
was one of the world's most glamorous bathrooms.
This is this incredible marble room.
This is one of the most beautiful marble in the world.
Takes big chunks of marble to be able to get these patterns
on the floor and on the walls.
It's almost impossible to do now.
It would be so expensive.
NARRATOR: If baths could talk, this one would name-drop.
French movie star Catherine Deneuve
made this tub famous by posing here
during a photo shoot for designer Yves Saint Laurent.
Another bathroom one floor up
is lined floor to ceiling with onyx.
This is the other incredible bathroom.
Our friend Bill Willis,
the very famous designer in Marrakech,
used to say, "It's the chicest bathroom I've ever seen."
NARRATOR: The Alaouis have preserved everything
exactly as French architect Paul Sinoir intended in 1930.
Rather than using locally made materials,
the architect Sinoir imported crates of French tiles
and tons of marble from Italy.
It was built with durable engineering and craftsmanship.
So many features, like the plated ironwork on the stairs,
look as if they were installed only yesterday.
Even the old radiators still work.
This is an interesting detail here.
It's the radiator.
Was a little hole here to warm dishes.
NARRATOR: With all this elegance,
it's no wonder generations of celebrities wanted to stay here
and enjoy this superb Moroccan hideaway.
Many famous feet have walked these French-tiled floors.
This is the table
where Churchill, Roosevelt, and Charles de Gaulle sat in 1943.
The Alaouis bought it recently --
The perfect dining-room table for this storied old villa.
ALAOUI: All the people who came through Marrakech,
they had dinner around this table,
and there are lots of them.
Anthony Quinn, the Kennedys,
Charlie Chaplin, Roosevelt --
all these people.
The whole world ate and had fun around this table,
so it's quite famous.
NARRATOR: There are no historic-preservation laws
in Morocco, so many fine old houses have been lost already.
The Alaouis are hoping that will change soon
so the Villa Bled Roknine can go on playing hostess
to future generations.
Now we're traveling to Japan,
where one couple loved their architect so much,
they changed their whole lifestyle
to fit in with his design.
NARRATOR: We're back on our tour
of the world's most extreme homes.
In the busy town of Chiba, Japan,
there's a house that looks more like a brown brick garage
than a home.
When therapist Rie Takano and her husband
commissioned architect Yasuhiro Yamashita
to build their new house,
this was definitely not what they were expecting.
[ Speaking Japanese ]
INTERPRETER: I was expecting a white, stylish house,
but Yamashita said he had a good proposal.
"Don't you want to build a house from soil?" he said.
I imagined a brown house made from earth
instead of my white house, and I was very shocked.
But he said, "Won't you be my guinea pig?"
And because I was a fan, I said, "Of course."
And we went for this design.
NARRATOR: There are 2,600 blocks in the house,
all handmade from soil, sand, water, and pebbles,
and strengthened with magnesium oxide from seawater.
They were sun-dried for seven days rather than baked,
which made them stronger.
Eight people from Yamashita's office worked half a year
to make the blocks in their spare time.
The blocks are held in place
by a cement of sand, soil, and water.
Earth blocks are an excellent construction material
for developing countries.
They're cheap and extremely strong.
That's important in Chiba, too.
The house has already withstood an earthquake.
Rie was put off by the idea of a house made of earth blocks,
but now she loves her new home.
INTERPRETER: I went for the house
based on its appearance,
and I didn't think about how it would affect my lifestyle.
But once it was built, I found it was easy to live in.
It's a comfortable environment.
NARRATOR: The house has just one large room.
At night, they roll out a futon to sleep on.
At one end, there's an island,
and on top, a platform where they eat.
There's a staircase made of laminated plywood veneer.
Off the stairs is a tiny bathroom.
And there's a small kitchen.
Under the stairs, there's a smallish closet,
with some inventive shoe storage.
It's a simple space for a simple lifestyle.
INTERPRETER: My favorite place
is that curved spot over there.
I used to have a sofa in the past,
but it made my legs feel sluggish.
So I prefer to sit on the floor
and relax with the earth wall at my back and a low table.
NARRATOR: The floor is white-painted terrazzo,
a hand-smoothed mixture of concrete and gravel.
The earth bricks are 17 inches thick
and provide such good insulation that it takes
only a small heater to warm up the house
or a simple heat extractor to keep it cool.
The roof is a leaf shape
of large beams and insulated plywood.
A layer of glass bricks around the top of the walls,
four narrow windows, and a couple of skylights
all fill the house with soft light.
Recessed lamps
along the top of the wall and under the windows
do the same thing when it gets dark.
Living here means having few possessions and little privacy,
but that suits Rie and her husband.
INTERPRETER: I have to change my lifestyle
to suit the house --
for example, by being inventive with my storage
and reducing the number of things I have.
The place where I eat, sleep, and relax is all one space.
My husband and I don't have much private space,
but this also helps to bring us closer together.
I feel like I live in a piece of art.
It's very satisfying.
NARRATOR: Boat living makes you think
of low ceilings and tight sleeping quarters.
Not true if you live on the Thesay houseboat,
25 miles north of Prague in the Czech Republic.
It may look plain on the outside,
but inside, it resembles an ultramodern city apartment.
Marek and Pavla Ridky wanted no compromises on luxury
when they commissioned this minimalist duplex on the water.
This houseboat should be very comfortable.
So, it's partly boat,
but it's also a house where you can live for all your life.
NARRATOR: You enter and walk down a streamlined corridor
more like something you'd find in a Manhattan loft.
This is a hybrid of house and boat.
Above the water line,
it's all oak paneling and stainless steel --
very modern, chic, and simplified.
Construction is light and strong,
as the superstructure of any vessel ought to be.
Boats are notoriously cold in the winter, but not this one.
The very important point in this room is a fireplace.
We wanted to have a visible symbol of family atmosphere,
and this is not only the source of heating,
because we have heating system in the floor,
and together it makes a warm atmosphere.
NARRATOR: All the furniture is custom-built,
like the spacious daybeds along the wall that double as sofas.
Marek is particularly happy with the stairs to the upper deck.
RIDKY: The stairs are manufactured
from the one piece of the stainless steel,
and I design it because the whole houseboat
should be not complicated, very simple, and very light.
NARRATOR: Marek chose houseboat living
because he liked the idea
of being able to move on if he wanted to.
Just one problem --
His houseboat is too tall for many bridges.
So he designed a detachable upper deck.
Problem solved.
Now we are in a bedroom.
It's made from the one piece of steel construction.
I wanted to create a panoramic view.
It's possible to take off by crane
when we need to move the houseboat
and we need to go under the bridge.
Also, it makes contrast against wooden bottom.
And last thing I would like to mention is the glass barrier,
which makes this room a little bit bigger.
NARRATOR: Most of the furniture is transparent up here,
and all the lighting is subtle and recessed
so that nothing can interfere with the view of the river,
the Czech Republic's longest, called the River Vltava.
Here you can see the nice view on the water.
You can see sunrise, and that's very nice.
NARRATOR: The river is great to look at,
but not so good to bathe in,
so there's a Jacuzzi on the deck.
And no expense or space was spared
in creation of the luxury bathroom,
with its steel-paneled shower.
My vision is that I would like to create
a similar houseboat for people
which would like to live a very deep and interesting life.
NARRATOR: Now we're on our way to Mexico
and a smart penthouse
with one big surprise behind the bathroom door.
NARRATOR: We're back with more extreme homes.
What do you design
for a party-loving bachelor in Guadalajara who has everything?
A grand penthouse with no walls or boundaries,
and a big secret.
Knowing his client is a party animal,
architect Jorge Hernandez Silva
designed an elegant, glamorous apartment.
Everything is sleek,
from the lacquered cupboards
to the glassy polish on the porcelain floors.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
INTERPRETER: The owner of this house is a single guy
who doesn't have any plans for marriage or anything like that.
So, for him, it was very important
to have one big place where you can host parties and meetings,
and where you can feel
everything open as one big lounge.
So that's why we knocked down all the walls.
NARRATOR: Not that it's cold in Guadalajara,
but there is a huge fireplace
lined with volcanic rock called recinto ***.
The flames flare up through a steel grid.
INTERPRETER: In Guadalajara,
we don't have the weather for a chimney,
but if you use it once or twice a year,
you get the sense of the living room as a warm place.
The idea is to bring all the spaces together
and make this a part of the room.
NARRATOR: The apartment is full of fine art...
like this mountain range
by Mexico's top conceptual artist, Jorge Méndez Blake.
There are intriguing things wherever you look,
like these mercury pools
or this sculpture made from aircraft parts.
But the biggest conversation piece is in the bathroom.
And fair warning --
Don't bother using it if you're afraid of heights.
Visit the bathroom, and you're sitting
on two layers of reinforced glass
over an old elevator shaft 150 feet deep.
Going to this bathroom has become famous in the city
and given many a guest a heart-stopping moment.
INTERPRETER: The owner of the building
told me to use this space,
and we found that there was
this incredible old-fashioned brick shaft.
So when I saw it, I told myself, "Damn, we need to use this."
NARRATOR: You can see more of the stylish old building
on the roof deck.
But any trace of the apartment that was once here is long gone,
replaced by this elegant open space.
When the party's over, partitions in the walls
open up to create as many rooms as you'd like
and lend a little nighttime privacy
to this grand bachelor pad.
You have to travel a long way
to find an undeveloped stretch of coastline these days.
But a Canadian couple found one --
this headland near Port Mouton, Nova Scotia.
They fell in love with it
and decided to build their dream home.
Any time of day,
the Two Hulls House feels quiet and remote.
It sits apart and juts out into its own cove.
It's called the Two Hulls House
because it's designed to resemble just that --
Two ships that have been dragged up the beach
and parked in a dry dock.
It's a design that began as a sketch
with the maritime culture that dominates the region.
Outside, the design gives you a sense
of walking or playing among the hulls of two ships.
Inside, the architects wanted to create a floating sensation,
much like being at sea.
Each of these long, rectangular structures
has a different purpose.
The left is for daytime living,
the other for nighttime sleeping.
The two hulls are constructed
inside a box truss or diagonal frame,
much like a bridge, with massive steel pins
braced into the thin foundation panels
to act as powerful supports for the overhang.
At the ocean end on both sides,
there's a covered porch area, apparently suspended in midair.
The steel frame is lined on the outside with a cedarwood skin,
carefully left with gaps to expand and contract
in the freeze/thaw swings of temperature.
This coast is notorious for its ferocious storms,
and the home's design was tested in a wave machine
to find the best way
to withstand the impact of a huge roller.
Theoretically, any extreme wave
should pass right under the house,
leaving the main frame intact.
The maritime theme continues inside.
The living space looks clean and shipshape.
It has a large central fireplace and a separate media nook.
There's a galley kitchen.
Much of the storage space
is recessed into the walls in cedar cupboards.
Everything is flush and neat,
like below decks on a ship or a yacht.
The entrance lobby has a simple Japanese-like stairway
with storage drawers built into the steps.
On the bedroom side, the focus is all on the sea.
The corridors are narrow, like gangways on a ship.
Getting upstairs is like climbing up on deck.
In the bathroom below, the sunken bath
can quickly be transformed into a shower
with a set of wooden grates.
The Two Hulls House is radical,
yet fits perfectly into the landscape,
a tribute to the maritime industry
that sustains this part of the world.
Now we're headed to Brazil, where one man's home
was shipped around the world
before finding a safe harbor on a Sao Paolo hilltop.
NARRATOR: We're back and touring
some of the most extreme homes in the world.
Our next home traveled the world before landing in Brazil,
because the entire structure
is built out of shipping containers.
Architect Danilo Corbas was getting tired
of the constant upkeep of his traditional home.
So he decided to create a modern house
that's inexpensive to build and economical to run.
He landed on the idea of creating a house
entirely out of shipping containers.
[ Speaking Portuguese ]
INTERPRETER: The project started from a desire to get involved
with an industrial style of architecture
and make it residential.
Containers were exactly what I was looking for.
NARRATOR: Most shipping containers are retired
after 10 years of use at sea --
too many dents, too much rust.
But Danilo found a few in pretty good shape
and bought four for around $2,000 apiece.
It took a heavy-duty disc cutter
to carve out the doorways and window frames.
When the containers arrived on site,
they were placed on top
of concrete pilings poured in the ground.
They simply sit in position with no clips or bolts --
just gravity.
[ Speaking Portuguese ]
INTERPRETER: It's basically made of four containers
in the shape of an "H."
On the ground floor, I have
the two wings made of containers.
And on the upper level,
another two containers sit side by side
to create the bridge of the "H."
NARRATOR: The space under the bridge
is encased within tempered glass walls
to create a light and airy living room.
The containers are made
of a special steel alloy called Corten.
It reacts chemically with the weather
and becomes rust resistant.
So Danilo painted them in colorful, water-based paints.
In tropical Brazil,
insulation is supposed to keep the heat out.
On the inside walls, he used a lining of volcanic rock
spun into a fibrous layer,
covered with plaster for a smooth finish.
The corrugations of the container are still visible
to keep the industrial look.
On the container tops, Danilo installed green roofs.
He covered each of the containers
with a waterproof liner, added drainage,
and laid down strips of turf.
The roofs help keep the containers cool inside
and add an eco-design element to the house.
INTERPRETER: I think
that because it's unusual and different,
it is an extreme house today.
But in a couple of years, maybe it will be normal.
I think a lot of people will follow me
because of the simplicity of the construction,
the speed of the construction, and the mobility.
You could move this kind of house from one place to another.
NARRATOR: So, maybe these old timers
haven't yet finished their traveling days.
After all, they're not bolted down,
and Danilo thinks one day
he just might put them back on a truck and move on.
Next, we're off to Seattle,
where one man took a tiny storage unit
and created a split-level condo.
NARRATOR: We're back on our tour of extreme homes.
Now we're headed to Seattle,
where, when confronted with a subterranean box room
measuring 16 feet by 11,
most people would see it as just that --
a storage unit and not much else.
But it took an aircraft designer from Boeing
to envision the space as a multipurpose condo.
SAUER: It was being used as a storage room,
I think, for an accountant,
and, so, it was kind of '70s paneling on the wall
and just piled with boxes of papers and storage.
It was pretty rough, and we came here,
and I think I was walking through the threshold
when I realized it wasn't a storage room,
but a place to live.
NARRATOR: The apartment is small,
but the engineering is brilliant.
This space is literally seven rooms in one.
The kitchen feels like the galley of a 747.
Steve used durable, inexpensive, off-the-shelf materials,
like butcher block, to build his own cupboards.
For the counters, he bought a local EcoTop
made from compressed black paper and epoxy resin.
Beautiful material,
and it's durable and strong and homogeneous.
Even though it is kind of a layered paper product,
it feels more like a homogeneous material.
NARRATOR: Steve can eat by himself in the breakfast nook
or have a dinner party in the dining room.
Rip out the blocks, and then this folds up.
And there we go. Seating for six.
NARRATOR: The cubbyhole above the closet
is Steve's workstation.
Standing up is good for you.
So, this is officially the closet.
Right now, it's also serving as kind of stand-up office space,
but it's got about four feet of clothing hanger here.
NARRATOR: When Steve is finished in the office,
it's one small leap from work to the media room,
with seating for two -- ideal for date night.
SAUER: This was my way to double-use this floor space,
and, so, below is the video lounge,
and it seats two fairly well --
this built-in bench --
and there's a 32" flat-screen here,
perfect for watching movies.
So, this is the café area.
So, actually, I think maybe this might be my favorite spot,
especially in -- The window is positioned such that,
though I'm sort of a gerbil in a cage from the outside,
I get the upper hand on people walking by,
and I tend to surprise them more than they surprise me.
I wanted to not make it too solo all the way along
and hope to have some company in here.
NARRATOR: Steve gets design suggestions
from his engineering buddies.
Every now and then, he throws a progress party.
Guests are invited to bring more ideas on how to save space.
The largest party had 17 people in here at once.
[ Laughs ]
And a more reasonable maximum was 14,
where people are actually comfortably situated.
NARRATOR: But when it comes to bedtime,
getting in and out requires the skill of a gymnast.
The bed could sleep two...maybe.
It's a twin bed, plus about 10 inches of bolster on the edge.
And it'll work for two people, but you have to be pretty cozy.
Otherwise it's actually slightly shorter than I am,
but I find that it works perfectly,
and my feet don't fight with this box at all.
And it's an incredibly comfortable place to sleep.
NARRATOR: There is another bedroom,
but it's small and cleverly hidden.
Ceiling is glass, and this is an IKEA tabletop,
so it's a nice piece of tempered glass.
Above it was that other bed, and the frame --
The slats are still up there.
I can still put a mattress up if someone's willing to sleep
with a small overhead space and so on.
NARRATOR: There's a conventional half bath,
and Steve dug deep to create the perfect hot tub
for, well, one.
This is the sort of one pure luxury feature that I put in,
just because I could, because I'm on the ground floor.
This is about a yard of dirt dug out, but well worth it, I think.
I've got enough for --
I can actually squeeze two people into this thing.
[ Laughs ] And there it is.
NARRATOR: A high-flying engineer who lives below ground,
but this is a first-class cabin
designed with lots of air-craftiness.
And Steve says it's broadened his social life immensely.
We've seen homes in all shapes and sizes
at locations around the world,
from a house with endless glamour
to a cabin for beach lovers,
to a houseboat that resembles a Manhattan loft
and a steel house that's been around the world many times,
to a Mexican apartment
where a trip to the bathroom will make you dizzy,
but all of these houses have one thing in common --
To their owners, they're simply home, sweet home.
Thanks for watching "Extreme Homes."