Four bright blue shipping containers formerly used to transport Absolut vodka have become ‘Creative Space,’ a versatile series of workspaces at the company’s headquarters in Åhus, Sweden.  Recent architectural grads Astrid Skog and Charlotte Stuveback stacked the crates and transformed them into working environments supporting a wide range of creative processes. The structure was used for Absolut’s ‘Hackathon,’ a three-day event exploring ways to creatively repurpose materials like glass vodka bottles and otherwise reduce the company’s environmental footprint.

The shipping container workspaces consist of four distinct areas: the bar, the distillery, the workshop and the bottlery. The bar offers a place to relax, drink coffee, read magazines and talk to fellow designers. The distillery is a brainstorming space, and the bottlery encourages experimentation with ideas in early phases. Finally, the workshop is where these ideas are made into real products and concepts.  One of the coolest projects that came out of Hackathon is a DIY sound system set into Absolut bottles and hung from the ceiling.

The spaces are full of their own impressive hacks, including a bunch of suspended vodka bottle lights and reuse of cardboard bottle sleeves as horizontal organizers within wall shelves. There are slide-out work surfaces with sawhorse-style legs and rolling crates full of tools tucked under tables. Now that the event is over, Absolut plans to ship the Creative Space crates to a new location so they can be used for innovation again.

When urban populations outgrow the pace of new construction, and suitable homes and offices spaces are difficult to find, what are property hunters to do? Perhaps more of them will start coming up with novel temporary solutions like this: a temporary, movable office made from shipping containers by Daiken-Met Architects.

The architecture firm had a difficult time finding leasable space in the city of Gifu, Japan. So they designed this three-story structure, which is made from seven 20-foot shipping containers connected using a steel frame system. The frame made it easier to stack the containers, and also provides balcony space, which can be hard to come by in urban areas.

Daiken-Met architects told Inhabitat, “In the local city, we are facing various problems such as decreasing population, increasing vacant land, on the other hand it is difficult to make a rental contract for small buildings.”

As Pop Up City notes, Sugoroku Office doesn’t just represent a new form of eco-friendly architecture, it’s a new sort of urbanism altogether. The architects obtained a short-term rental contract for a small plot of land that stipulates removal and reconstruction every few years.