Designing for communities: 'More complicated than just a meeting space'

Communal housing arrangements are becoming increasingly popular. A growing number of citizens are choosing to share facilities such as gardens, living rooms, and/or kitchens with others. There is also increasing knowledge about how to make such a housing collective financially and legally feasible. Social geographer and architect Tijmen Kuyper writes in his recent book Architecture for Community – a cohousing pattern language that one important aspect is sometimes overlooked: the design of the housing itself. Yet design is crucial for residents’ living enjoyment and sense of community.

Why is the design of a housing collective such a blind spot?
'People underestimate it. They think: we want to live communally, so we need a common room. But it’s more complicated than that. It’s not as simple as saying, ‘we’ll put people around a courtyard and it will be cozy.’ I didn’t write a two-hundred-page book for nothing. Another factor is that - with all due respect to my colleagues - architects aren’t trained to think about these kinds of questions for housing collectives. Over the past decades, collective housing was a very small niche, and architecture programs hardly paid any attention to it.'

You focus on a very specific topic: the relationship between architecture and community building. How did you get into that?
‘I saw things being built in practice that didn’t work. For example, housing collectives with a fantastic entrance hall and beautiful spaces that won architectural awards, but where residents nine times out of ten parked their bikes at the back, came in through the emergency staircase, and never used that hall. It sounds logical, but it often goes wrong. I experienced something similar in my own housing. I shared a living room and garden in a former nursing home with all kinds of super interesting, creative people. I thought, this will be so cozy. But nobody ever came, not once! Why? It was the routing. You had to go through two doors to get to that living room. The scale was also off: sharing a daily living space with thirty people only works if people are highly motivated and structured. That’s why I wanted my research to find out: why does one building become super cozy while another doesn’t?'

In response to that question, you developed seven basic principles. How did you go about that?
‘I spoke with a large number of initiatives, gradually starting to see patterns. Together with architect Flip Krabbendam, who has been involved in communal living since the 1970s, I started CoWonen. We gave countless presentations and ran workshops. That gave me the opportunity to test my ideas. After lots of talking, presenting, thinking, and refining, I arrived at these seven basic principles.'

You mentioned routing earlier. Can you give another example of such a basic principle?
‘Another basic principle is the social-spatial scale of spaces. Often, people in communal living are asked: what do you want to share and what not? That’s a bad question. You should ask: what do you want to share and with whom? In my collective, I share my bed only with my partner, the bathroom with one housemate, and the kitchen with four others. I don’t mind brushing my teeth with a housemate, but I do mind sharing a shower. This is linked to your shared-living vision. How much say do you have over who you live with? You might not want to share your kitchen with five random people, but you would with five specific people. Privacy, by the way, is the most important principle. If you can’t choose when you want contact or not, or if you can hear your neighbors breathing through the walls, you’ll give up on a community very quickly.'

In your book, you pay a lot of attention to spontaneous encounters. Why are they so important?
‘Often, planned and spontaneous encounters are lumped together, but they serve completely different functions and require completely different designs. Both are very important! Spontaneous encounters are especially underestimated. You come home with groceries, your neighbour is in the garden, and you have a quick chat: ‘Hey, your wife was in the hospital recently, how’s she doing?’ That’s a very different conversation than a scheduled meeting in your calendar. It’s spontaneous encounters that bring air and life into a community.'

Creating a housing collective often takes enormous time, money, and energy. How do you convince people to also pay attention to smart design?
‘Indeed, founding a collective is a huge effort. After years of hard work, it’s such a shame if the routing is wrong, a space is in the wrong place, or privacy isn’t properly built in. You can’t get far without finances, but it’s perhaps even worse if the building is finished and doesn’t work as hoped. At the same time, it’s fun. In our workshops, we discuss how people want to live together. Participants often say: this is why we’re doing it! That touches on another basic principle: the sense of ownership. It’s important that people understand why routes and spaces are where they are and that they can have a say. People need to feel that the building was partly designed by them.'

What use are these design principles if the building is already finished, or if you want to buy an existing building?
‘Sometimes you see a lot of frustration in existing communities. Why does nobody come into the common room? It can help to know it’s simply in the wrong location. Spontaneous encounters may be difficult, but you can maybe organise more planned encounters. If you’re lucky, buildings have some flexibility and spaces can be given new functions. A housing association is never finished; people change, and you want the building to adapt with them.'

How can a building be flexible? A wall is a wall, right?
‘The sexiest solution is to build flexible walls that can be moved. But they are very light and thin. Flip once designed a community with all flexible walls: the ideal flexible building. Well, that was a great architectural concept that didn’t work in practice. All the flexible walls ended up in storage, and recently, during a major renovation, all thin walls were replaced with heavy soundproof walls. What does work? Flexible spaces. In my book, I call them option spaces. Rooms of around twenty square meters, in a good location with doors in the right place, that can serve multiple functions. Then it can be a living room, a guest room, a private studio, or a playroom. Not flashy or exciting, but it works incredibly well.'

You also write that many questions remain unanswered. How will you address them?
‘First, I want to create a more compact, Dutch version of the book. Few people have the time to go through the full version. A pocket version would make it more accessible. Then, a deeper dive is needed. My book provides pieces of the puzzle, but I also want to show complete puzzles: standard forms that occur often and their pros and cons. For example, the ‘courtyard.’ People sometimes think a courtyard doesn’t fit in a tower. Well, it can, as long as the basic principles are applied correctly.'

Read more about Kuyper's book here: Architecture for Community – a cohousing pattern language

Author: Mickey Steijaert