This hexagonal floating student housing complex made of stacked reclaimed shipping containers is better than any dorm you could hope to live in. ‘Urban Rigger’ by Bjarke Ingels (BIG) creates a sustainable solution to the pressing need for additional accommodations for students in the city, providing 15 living spaces arranged around an internal courtyard. Completely carbon-neutral, the structures are solar-powered and make use of hydro source heating and low-energy pumps, and the first unit opened to the public on September 21st.

Each apartment is available to college students at $600 per month and includes a private bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. Occupants get access to the courtyard as well as a kayak landing, bathing platform, barbecue area and roof terrace. The pontoon basement features storage zones and fully automated laundry. It’s a pretty sweet deal for students, who get to gaze out of giant windows at the sunset every evening and enjoy a water-centric lifestyle that most adults only dream about.

Making use of the harbor ensures that students get to live close to the school, instead of far outside the city, where most affordable units are located. Eventually, BIG plans to create entire communities made up of multiple structures.

“There are few strategies that allow cities to expand,” the architects explain. “Yet, Copenhagen’s harbor remains an underutilized and underdeveloped area at the heart of the city. By introducing a building typology optimized for harbor cities we can introduce a housing solution that will keep students at the heart of the city.”

“Meanwhile, the standardized container system has been developed to allow goods to be transported by road, water or air, to anywhere in the world in a complex network of operators at a very low cots. By making use of the standard container system we are offered the framework of extremely flexible building typology.”

“By stacking 9 container units in a circle, we can create 15 studio residences which frame a centralized winter garden; this is used as a common meeting place for students. The housing is also buoyant, like a boat, so that can be replicated in other harbor cities where affordable housing is needed, but space is limited.”

Breaking, bending, twisting and warping wood, this ongoing series of installations fosters new forms of interaction within cities, challenging that most iconic piece civic furniture: the public bench.

Award-winning artist Jeppe Hein from Copenhagen (currently working in Berlin) has installed his Modified Social Benches at indoor galleries and outside in cities around the world.

To their creator, these are about more than just sculptural expression – on their origins: “Out of investigating architecture, communication, and social behavior in the urban space, a series of bench designs was born.”

Some engender specific and calculated responses, like sitting and facing your seatmate or climbing to reach an elevated seat suspended above. Others are more like puzzles or mysteries – it is up to the user to figure out what to do with them.

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Social Seating 14 Public Benches Foster Urban Interactions

Many college dorms – especially at public schools – are little more than prison-like rows of cheap, boring housing with no architectural interest to speak of. That’s definitely not the case at Tietgen Student Hall in the Ørestad district of Copenhagen, a circular seven-story building measuring 288,000 square feet with 360 rooms.

The circular shape enables all rooms to face outwards with a view of the courtyard, emphasizing equality and community. It also lets in lots of natural light. Each of the rooms has either a French window or a balcony.

Communal facilities on the ground floor include 30 kitchens, each with four fridges and two stoves, as well as music rooms, a bike storage room, a gym, a computer room, a study hall, an assembly hall, and outdoor sports areas. There are also sewing, bike and wood workshops.

Completed in 2006 and designed by Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter, the building looks more like a luxury apartment complex than college housing. “The house itself says what the idea behind it is: community,” say the architects. “You can walk all the way round on all floors. No hallways are a dead end; no doors are locked. The house does not turn its back on anyone.”