Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: What is Coho?

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

I guess out here its different than Colorado, although my discussions 
with folks at Nyland leads me to beleive they were designers of their 
community and did a fair amount of sweat equity, in at least one case 
entirely building one home.

All the groups in our area have done sweat equity on their projects and 
so, designed and built by the people who are going to live there is not 
all that misleading. The percentage of the total project that each 
group actually designs and builds may vary. Sweat equity tends to be in 
the commonhouse and grounds sorts of things but it is very much part of 
the experience of all the groups here, many for economic reasons.   
Architects do not design the projects, at least not here.  From my 
experience, the members do the design work and the architect advises 
and adds expertise, in a collaborative fashion.  At least that is how 
it has worked out here, and everywhere else I have heard about so far, 
although perhaps in some cases the residents merely approve what the 
architect designs????

I tend to beleive that one key element of cohousing is resident 
participation. Another is cooperative process of working together.  
Maybe another approach is to define what are the elements of cohousing 
and then string them together somehow?

RobSan
Sharingwood