Turning from Shore Drive onto Prince Road, it appears — towering, commanding — to come out of nowhere: rusted shipping containers stacked one upon another with cut-outs for doors and windows, a structure immediately incongruous with the modest ranches that line this residential block in St. Augustine South.

Passersby pause, drive slowly past the construction, neighbors stop to see its progress.

What is being built is vastly different from what had once stood here. But one of the giant water oaks that canopy the lot at 1369 Prince Road — the one Rob DePiazza had always worried about — came crashing down during Hurricane Irma in 2017.

The felled tree crushed the entire top floor of the two-story olive-green house, and DePiazza decided then to start from scratch with a vision he'd had for awhile.

"I've always been a fan of shipping container homes and their uses in general," DePiazza, 59, explained.

While plans for the non-traditional home began almost right after Irma, construction started about two months ago, first with laying a concrete foundation.

The footprint for DePiazza's new dwelling is made up of nine 8-foot-by-40-foot steel containers.

He acquired the vessels through a broker in the shipping industry, and with more imports coming in than going out they're not very difficult to come by.

"There's been a glut for years; fewer are going back out as they age and lose their cargo worthiness," DePiazza said.

One container has been tilted diagonally as an architectural feature, with stairs leading up to it forming an entryway into the main living areas on the second and third floors. DePiazza, who owns Screen Arts, a long-standing business on West King Street, flew in an artist friend from Barcelona to paint a brightly colored, graffiti-style mural on the exterior.

The entire living space, including three bedrooms and baths, makes up about 1,600 square feet. The ground floor will be used as a kind of workshop and informal gallery to showcase artwork he's collected through the years as well as pieces from local street artists.

While DePiazza picked up each of the cargo containers for approximately $2,000 each, the final cost to retrofit the space for his purposes will be much, much more in the end, including metal work, insulation, carpentry and plumbing and electrical systems.

"I think the perception is, it's cheaper [than a traditional home], but then so much goes into modifying them," DePiazza said.

He is putting up sheetrock walls but will also leave some areas of the original texture with its corrugated grooves in place. The container doors facing the street will be cast aside as shutters and fill the space with floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

DePiazza calls the aesthetic he's going for "retro industrial" and will decorate it with a bunch of mid-century modern furniture he owns.

Nothing in county building code or neighborhood bylaws has prevented him from getting permitting approvals.

"Then it's just, does it meet all the codes, and it does," DePiazza said.

While he's heard of more interest in repurposing shipping containers in general, DePiazza said he is told by the building department his is the first to be permitted in St. Johns County.

The one problem he's encountered so far is getting a home insurance policy but is still working on that issue.

 He said he hasn't gotten any negative comments yet from neighbors.

"It's kind of like a tourist attraction," he said.

DePiazza continues to post his progress on his Instagram account @princeroadcontainerhouse and hopes to be moved in sometime in the next three or four months with his 16-year-old, Gisella, and the family's Rat Terrier, Bruno.

And what does his teen daughter think about her new digs?

DePiazza just laughed. "She likes it," he said. "But then, she's weird like I am."