Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: private unit design

[sharon j emley (shardon5]

Hi,  I would largely agree with Chris on the benefit of having the units
designed independently of the members, except for the very general
guidelines.  And this is coming from someone who was very active on the
Design Committee.
        In my experience at Sonora Cohousing our involvement in the design was
largely a sham anyways.  Why this was is quite complicated, but was
largely because our architect was surprised and upset that our design
committee was willing to disagree with him and reacted by refusing to do
any work until we gave up. Alternately, he would also appear to agree to
incorporate certain details but then leave them out leaving us to
discover them after the plans were already completed.  At this point we
would be told by the developer's team that we couldn't correct them now
since the architect would go walk-about on us again and delay the project
even more than the year that it is already behind.
        In addition, the typical group is helpless when the architect and the
builder start disagreeing over what the different design options will
cost.  Yet the group is stuck with the increased cost when they have
chosen to believe the wrong "expert".
        For these reasons I say stay away from the design process, yet that does
not insure that you will not be screwed anyways.  To try to protect
yourselves from ballooning budgets you must give some very firm
guidelines to the design team including prices and square footages and
materials and deadlines.
        Perhaps the best solution is to try to use plans from completed
cohousing projects,
either literally or as a close template.  I know that there may be
payments to be made to the original architect, but these will be lower in
actual cost as well as indirect costs (speeding up the timeline and
reducing the drawn out uncertainty and conflict of the normal design
process) than making all new plans.
        These recycled plans can be shown to potential builders for the purposes
of getting good bid estimates based on local conditions.  Most builders
have architects or draftsmen on staff who can do some modifications to
suit local conditions or preferences of the local group. Maybe a first
step is to have a national library of cohousing project plans along with
documentation of the goals achieved as defined by the group, e.g. energy
efficiency, etc.
>From these, a new group could probably narrow down their design
parameters very significantly.
                 This has to be a part of a super stream-lined approach to 
cohousing. 
As someone has already said on this topic, it is difficult to sell most
of the slots in the project without some pretty good idea of the final
cost and design but it is impossible to get a guarantee of the price of
even a final design more than a few months prior to a definite date for
the start of construction.  So you either need a process where you can
commit to beginnig construction with a smaller percentage of committed
members or where you commit to a design with a budget 25% or more below
what the group wants knowing that when you are ready to build in perhaps
another year, your inexpensive design may have jumped up that much.
        Maybe a first step is to have a national library of cohousing project
plans along with documentation of the goals achieved as defined by the
group, e.g. energy efficiency, etc.
>From these, a new group could probably narrow down their design
parameters very significantly.
        I know that there are good architects and there are architects who are
happy to work with a group on an honest basis, but there probably aren't
many that are both, and I expect that they are difficult to identify. 
The enormous waste of time, money, group energy and mental health when
you don't have one of them is incalculable. 
        Don Arkin, Sonora Cohousing