Re: Group Design
From: BPaiss (BPaissaol.com)
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 95 10:12 CDT
In response to the issues surrounding individual vs group design

Rob wrote:

"It would be interesting to know how many prospective cohousers have looked
at cohousing and come to the conclusion that they would not be willing to
give up control of the design of their own personal living 
space to a group. Granted, on one level, unless you build your own custom
home, you do that anyway." 

In my experience with several groups who have gone through the design of
their communities, it is becomming very clear that some people want to build
custom homes.  If this is made clear at the very beginning of the design
process and the site plan will allow it (i.e. a non-attached unit) then by
all means give members the opportunity to do it.  

My only suggestion is that those people who are going to build custom,
understand the implications of that choice, (increased cost if professionally
designed and built, longer schedule) and most importantly, that those people
are separated out of the group process to carry on in a parallel track.

At Nyland we had two community members buy their "lot" from the community and
went along and hired their own designers and builders to build their homes.
 The only constraints these members were under were to select exterior
materials that matched the rest of the units.  This was a community decision.
 So the windows, roof materials and color and exterior siding were already
selected.  Other than that, these members did their own thing.  From what I
can tell it worked out fine.

Bill Paiss
RMCA, The CoHousing Network, Nyland CoHousing
bpaiss [at] aol.com
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