Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Questions on setting up a Design Team

[Berrins (Berrins]

In a message dated 3/12/03 10:30:37 AM, Pagecreatives [at] aol.com writes:

<< Dear Cohousing List Members:
At Mosaic Commons in Metro West of Boston,  We are hopefull to form a Design 
Team soon,  and have some questions,  could anyone write with information on 
their experience with the design team:  
1) How many people are/were on the design Team.  
2) What the breakdown of tasks are/were  
3)  How your design team was chosen  
4)  What the design team does?
And anyother information about this kind of team you could pass on?

(you can also send off list to Pagecreatives [at] aol.com)  
Thanks very much!
Debbie,  (for Mosaic Commons,  Metro West of Boston) >>

1) No set number- whoever wanted to be on the design team was on it.  I think 
we had 5 or 6 people on it.
2) One person was chosen to be the liason between the community and the 
contractor and there was one back-up.  Other than that, tasks were assigned 
to one or two people as they came up.
3) See #1
4) The design team worked primarily to set up the discussions at general 
meetings.  We worked with various issues such as choices (e.g. flooring, 
bathroom options, siding), site plan utilization and coordinating 
customizations.  The number of details seemed to expand geometrically as time 
went on.  Some choices were farmed out to task forces, such as house colors 
(choosing house colors was one of the hardest decisions we had to make!).

One recommendation I would make would be to keep in close contact with the 
contractor, architects and project coordinator.  They each often have 
different ideas about what can and/or should be done.  The architect wants a 
cool design and to satisfy your requirements, both esthetic and practical.  
The contractor wants to make money- always count on that- and to keep the 
project streamlined to simplify it for the subcontractors.  The project 
coordinator's job is to keep the project moving along and within budget.  

Your job is the get the best site plan, best house designs and best building 
materials you can for the money, pick and choose what options are high 
priority, get the community to make decisions so you can keep things moving 
and, with all of this, stay within your budget to the extent possible.  This 
often entails recommending to the community that some interesting ideas are 
too costly, too complicated and/or too impractical.  The hardest thing to get 
people to understand is that complexity adds time, cost and the likelihood of 
mistakes.  Also, make choices AND STICK TO THEM.  Quite often people would 
sign their purchase and sale and then see what somebody else did and want to 
change their design.  If you can, get people to show their individual unit 
designs to each other while you still have an iteration or two from the 
architects so you can see other people's ideas before you sign the purchase 
and sale agreements.  Finally, find a way to be sure people don't pester the 
contractor- use the design team contact.  A few people, despite pleas to the 
contrary, for some reason felt entitled to keep calling the contractor.  This 
really slowed things up.  

With all that in mind (plus whatever else folks reposnd with!) have a great 
time.  The design team was a dynamic team.  Have fun-

Roger
Pathways Cohousing
Northampton, MA
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