Affordable Housing Hits the Water...In Shipping Containers

With available land in short supply in Copenhagen, the design startup Urban Rigger has launched a novel (or sad, depending on your opinion) solution to providing affordable housing for the city's student population. Students can now rent a shipping container sitting on a barge off the coast for $600 a month. Fortunereports that the program is the result of a collaboration between Urban Rigger and Bjarke Ingels of the architecture firm BIG.

By stacking containers in two staggered triangles, the designers create an open-air courtyard in the center, and use the tops of the second level for a deck, a solar array, and a small lawn. Inside, the apartments—15 of them— have the spare but airy feeling you’d expect from a Scandinavian design project.

Although it's starting small, Urban Rigger sees the potential for expanding the housing opportunities onto additional barges or into other European cities facing similar land crunches.