Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Non-standardized houses?

[John Faust (wjfaust]

>
>
> Are you sure you want to head in that direction?  Here at Eno Commons,
> we only had two house designs (cost saving) and we went with a
> production builder (another cost saving).  However, I do not believe
> our community has a cookie-cutter feel.
>
>
That's a really important point. I know when I walk through my own
conventional subdivision, it definitely has a cookie cutter feel to it. The
single-family homes are minor variants on a common theme and stand on their
own merit. However, when I walk through two of the cohousing communities in
nearby Tucson (Sonora, Stone Curves), my response is very different even
though they are multi-family (condo-like) structures. I think it is because
of the architecture of the whole. It suggests something larger and more
coherent than just individual houses. Like most cohousing communities, they
are clustered around common areas without the intruding streets, driveways
or boundary walls that break up conventional subdivisions.

John Faust

Desert Mosaic Cohousing
(forming in Sierra Vista, AZ)