Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Food Values

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

Craig Ragland <craigragland [at] gmail.com>
is the author of the message below.
It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------
On 3/10/06, Alexander Robin A <alexande.robi [at] uwlax.edu> wrote:
>
> If cooking and communal eating are to be a large part of the community, I
> would recommend two things very strongly: 1) make sure the communal dining
> room has excellent acoustics, and 2) make sure it is not so cramped that it
> makes it difficult for handicapped people to navigate. ...

Here here! (or rather, Hear here),

Songaia did a minor (cost) upgrade to our dining room and added acoustic
tiles. Absolutely the best ROI for any physical improvement we've made.

Here's an article on common house kitchen/dining room design by Laura Fitch
on the Coho/US website (cohousing.org), which has some useful specifics:

http://www.cohousing.org/creating_commonhouse1.aspx

I might add that no matter how well space is designed acoustically, the
energetics of the people (especially kids) still overwhelm us when we are
overwhelm-able. I'm usually uplifted and energized myself by high activity.
My wife often reacts negatively and cringes when a 7-year-old kid gets
excited and yells in enthusiasm. I'm more likely to linger after dinner,
while she's more likely to head home. We've strived to establish behavioral
norms for our kids in the kitchen/dining room areas, but its been a
challenge for a variety of reasons.