Interview with cph village

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Frederik and his partner, a two-man army from CPH Shelter, have set out to solve the urbanization challenges of Copenhagen by creating a new neighborhood called CPH Village

facilities such as a café, a vegetable garden, etc. When you say “permanent housing at a temporary location”, what does that entail?

To alleviate affordable housing shortage in Copenhagen, we need to take action now. At the moment, there are plenty of uninhabited areas in Copenhagen that are supposed to be used for permanent city development 10-15 years from now. So, we asked ourselves:

“Isn’t there a way to build permanent housing and still include the element of mobility?”

Frederik, can you tell us about the concept of CPH Village?

First of all, it is a concept that seeks to address the need for affordable housing for students in Copenhagen. We have created a new way of looking at urban development, because – at least in our opinion – the traditional paradigm is not going to alleviate the housing shortage for students anytime soon. We see CPH Village as a company that solves societal issues in terms of dealing with the urbanization challenges by creating affordable, permanent housing at a temporary location. The students are going to live in recycled shipping containers, where they will have access to their own space with kitchen and shared bathroom with one other person. It comes at a price of approx. DKK 4,000, but also include a community house and other shared

Based on Lean Thinking, the shipping containers are turned into homes at a factory, which means that containers are assembled into city-like structures on site, and not constructed on site where people get in the way of one another all the time and where the project is delayed due to bad weather. Think of it as LEGO bricks – the containers are mobile and can be assembled into different structures – then separated again and eventually moved from one location to another easily. So, in 10-15 years when one of these locations are going to be used for conventional housing, we’ll move the village to a different, uninhabited location in Copenhagen. How has this concept been received?

Actually, it has been very well received. Everyone we have spoken to about this has been very open minded and positive about the concept – both politicians, local communities, homeowners’ associations, etc. The only issue in this project has been the legislation. Based on the positive feedback we got, we never thought that there would be any issues, but because this is a flagship project, The Planning Act in Denmark did not provide


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