Floating residential infrastructure at community scale
Make water buildable
DONSÖ develops and delivers standardized floating residential infrastructure — the system architecture, homes, marine interfaces and delivery model behind permanent communities on suitable urban water areas.
Concept visualisation
01 / Thesis
Europe does not only need more homes. It needs more places where homes can be built.
Land close to European cities is scarce, contested and slow to release. Meanwhile, suitable and underused water areas exist in harbours, basins and industrial waterfronts that are already served by roads, power and utilities.
DONSÖ exists to make a defined subset of those water areas developable — through one repeatable residential system, on suitable sheltered water, and answered site by site as a legal and environmental question.
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre estimates that, by 2035, Europe needs more than two million new homes each year to meet demand — around 650,000 more each year than the roughly 1.6 million built today.
02 / What DONSÖ is
A system integrator for floating residential communities.
DONSÖ is not a boat builder, an architecture practice or a single-project developer. It is the platform and IP company that defines the standardized system and coordinates its delivery. Specialist partners manufacture and install the sub-systems; DONSÖ owns the architecture that makes them repeatable.
DONSÖ owns and develops
- System architecture and design rules
- Standardized home modules and marine interfaces
- Technical specifications and engineering coordination
- Coordination of third-party certification and the compliance pathway
- Production system and project model
- Customer relationships and brand
- Digital monitoring and service platform
Specialist partners deliver
- Module and component manufacturing
- Marine engineering and installation
- Energy, water and utility systems
- Project capital and long-term ownership
04 / The opportunity
One community proves it. A standardized system scales it.
DONSÖ ONE is the first commercial reference: 50 homes targeted for price-accessible owner-occupation on shared marine infrastructure. The larger opportunity is the platform behind it — a standardized, repeatable system with seven revenue layers, designed to scale through existing industrial capacity before committing to a dedicated factory.
Figures on this page are preliminary targets and illustrative scenarios, not forecasts, offers or valuations.
05 / Project economics
The economics work at community scale.
The economic advantage emerges at community scale, where shared engineering, infrastructure and mobilisation costs are distributed across more homes.
| Homes in one project | Modelled cost | Versus SCB benchmark (indicative) |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | 76,597 SEK/m² | ≈ +48% |
| 30 | 54,546 SEK/m² | ≈ +5% |
| 50 | 46,964 SEK/m² | ≈ −9% |
| 100 | 41,810 SEK/m² | ≈ −19% |
| 500 | 37,048 SEK/m² | ≈ −29% |
Preliminary target-cost model. Figures describe a fully established home including its share of shared infrastructure, engineering, permitting, construction finance and contingency, before developer return. The benchmark is the Swedish national average for newly produced multi-dwelling buildings, 51,846 SEK/m² (Statistics Sweden, 2024), which includes land, VAT and the project's profit or loss and covers construction nationally rather than a specific site. This is an indicative benchmark — not yet a like-for-like comparison, until VAT, water-area fees, shore connections, development costs and margin are treated identically on both sides. Indicative crossover: approximately 29 units.
The current target-cost model indicates potential cost competitiveness against the benchmark from approximately 30 units, subject to engineering validation, supplier quotations, site conditions and regulatory requirements. Target costs are based on the current system model and will be progressively replaced by supplier quotations and engineering data during the validation phase.
06 / Roadmap
Development roadmap
What the reference system defines today, and what the engineering validation phase delivers next.
Defined
- 50-home reference configuration
- Three standardized home sizes
- Residential and shared-infrastructure scope
- Preliminary scale-cost model
- Initial project and partnership structure
Validation phase
- Supplier pricing
- Marine engineering
- Site selection
- Permitting pathway
- Insurance and financing requirements
- Conditional pilot agreement