Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: common houses in small communities

[Chris ScottHanson (chris]

Great response here from Rob.  I would like to echo what he has said.

Thanks, Rob.

Chris


On Dec 11, 2006, at 10:06 AM, Rob Sandelin wrote:

> In the initial design concepts of cohousing from the culture of  
> Denmark, a
> large community space was designed to replace some of the needs for  
> personal
> household space. In other non cohousing communities with a  
> commonhouse-like
> buildings, this is often clearly the case even to the extreme of  
> all the
> sites plumbing is in the common building and private spaces are  
> simply for
> sleeping. So in theory, a group laundry replaces individual home  
> laundry
> plumbing,  a large group kitchen and meal program allows for  
> simple, small
> kitchens. In America, often due to both cultural and loan  
> expectations,
> individual homes are much more designed to be independent of any group
> resources, you can have your own laundry, your kitchen is fully  
> independent,
> etc.
>
> So the  small commonhouse design is somewhat dependant upon what  
> your home
> designs will and will not support.  Unless your members have previous
> experience living in a community, a forming group have will have  
> some blind
> spots about how community actually functions, and really there is  
> no way to
> predict the outcome of how you will choose to associate. Hopefully  
> there
> will be a huge amount of sharing of resources once you move in. Do you
> really need a TV in a commonspace or will people who like football  
> or 24
> simply hang out together in someone's home? Will your members adapt  
> to TV as
> a group experience?  The same goes for children's activities, will the
> parents want the kids to be hanging out in the commonhouse, or will  
> they
> want to hang at Steves house to play video games?  The balance of  
> home based
> activities vs. community based activities will depend upon your
> relationships with each other, your home space sizes and designs,  
> and how
> much of the activities you do are comfortable doing together,  
> outside the
> home. It also might be impacted by your location, an urban center  
> location
> often has lots more things available to happen than a rural end of  
> the road
> sort of location. I have been to cohousing groups where because of the
> relationship problems of the members, many people did not go into the
> commonhouse more than a couple times a year, thus their social  
> interactions
> were done in their home. I have been to other places where the  
> commonhouse
> is booked up 6 nights a week with activities and meetings.  Neither  
> group
> could have predicted those outcomes in advance.
>
> One of the patterns I have observed is that common house room usage  
> morphs
> over time and so even if you build an office in your commonhouse  
> because
> when you started you had lots of interest in this,  after you move  
> in and
> experience it, it might go unused and later converted into a yoga room
> because that is the actual need at that time. Later it might become a
> storage place. Five years later, it might even go back to being an  
> office
> again.   So based on this my general commonhouse design advice has  
> always
> been to think multiple uses of spaces over time rather than  
> dedicated spaces
> with lots of built in features that only support a single type of  
> use. Think
> generic, how many 12x12 enclosed spaces would be enough. How many  
> 20X50
> spaces would be enough? Is there a possibility to add spaces later  
> if we
> need them? For example, could a patio later be covered with a roof  
> to make a
> covered outside play area?
>
> Your community will change over time, and thus the needs and usage  
> of the
> building you create will too.
>
>
> Rob Sandelin
> Sharingwood Cohousing
> Snohomish County, WA
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