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Rising populations and soaring real estate prices pose significant challenged to urban housing. In a desperate hunt for affordable living options, communal co-living spaces have emerged as a creative solution, offering quality living conditions through clever space optimization strategies. By implementing innovative design techniques, these shared living communities maximize every square foot to create functional spaces within compact footprints.
Amid a significant global housing shortage and an increase in urban growth, the residential phenomenon of co-living is expanding, fostering a community-based lifestyle where socialization becomes a fundamental principle. Resources, values, interests, and experiences are shared, creating new ways of living. While co-living buildings also incorporate spaces for individuality, this new form of communal domesticity emerges as a viable alternative suitable for diverse users, not only students or young adults but also older residents, promoting efficient space utilization and intergenerational interaction.
MVRDV has just released a new design study exploring how co-living can help shape the future of housing. Created in collaboration with developer HUB and sustainable investor Bridges Fund Management, the study introduces a comprehensive study exploring diverse typologies, aiming to revolutionize communal living and vibrant neighborhoods. It addresses modern housing needs, including flexibility, sustainability, and community, while tackling climate crisis and affordability issues. The endeavor offers tailored solutions for various co-living projects, catering to many demographics and lifestyles.
The International Day of Cooperatives is a celebration of the cooperative movement, which takes place annually on the first Saturday of July. In 1992, the United Nations General Assembly established it a national day, celebrating the cooperative movement worldwide with yearly themes. The cooperative movement is an association focused on achieving common goals and addressing collective communal needs. Cooperatives believe in community development at their core, prioritizing people and supporting local communities to improve their well-being. Moreover, the co-living models that have been adapted from it have become an enormous success over the past few decades, providing a form of cost-effective social housing. The cooperative structure redefines how people live, work, play, and collaborate. This year's theme is “Cooperatives: Partners for accelerated sustainable development.”
As cooperative principles continue to be injected into built environments today, the concept has created different models of co-op housing, leading to co-living. Over the past years, established European awards have celebrated co-living and architecture studios and developers worldwide have designed different models exploring co-living. The articles and projects selected in this article address what it means to live together, work together, and form healthy communities in this day and age.
Dramatic societal transformations- such as pandemics and technological advancements - call for dramatic shifts in lifestyles. Architects keep up by exploring and proposing new models of housing, each iteration catering to society’s latest needs. The co-living model is one such example that has become a roaring success over the past few decades. Redefining the way people live, co-living seeks to provide a form of cost-effective social housing. Although widely targeted at younger generations, the co-living industry is evolving to cater to various niche groups.
The interest in co-living is on the rise, a direction emphasized by the merger between the largest co-living operator in the US, Common, and their European equivalent, Habyt. The two companies manage more than 4,000 apartments in the US and 7,000 apartments in Europe and Asia, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The term co-living refers to a modern form of group housing where residents share communal spaces for socializing, cooking, and gathering, and have access to shared amenities such as cleaning services or dog walking.
The rise of co-living has begun to radically shape interior design. In residential projects and commercial developments, co-living is tied to the emergence of the Kitchenless Home idea. Began by Spanish architect Anna Puigjaner, this idea is tied to a range of innovations in interior design and co-living that have been built over the last five years. In turn, these new interiors began to tell a story of housing and spatial experience rooted in modern life.
The past couple of decades introduced the world to new ways of living as a result of different social, economic, and ecological changes. Naturally, these changes found their way into the architecture and urban practice, provoking new concepts within traditional typologies. Designing a space, regardless of its function, has always prioritized users' needs and ensured practicality and functionality, but recently, keywords like flexibility, privacy, inclusivity, and eco-consciousness have become driving forces behind design processes. In this interior focus, we will look at how current cities and living trends across the world have reshaped interior design and introduced modifications to typical typologies.
Communal living is nothing new. Throughout history, housing has long been tied to both shared needs and a concentration of resources. Today, between population growth and an increase in urban density and real estate prices, architects and urban planners have been pursuing alternatives for shared living. These new models explore a range of spatial and formal configurations with a shared vision for the future.
It’s no secret that tiny homes have become exceedingly popular in recent years – a signifier of minimalist bohemian living in response to the excesses of the current day. From reoutfitted RV’s to prefabricated Muji homes to futuristic Nestron pods, the world of architecture has seen a variety of tiny houses gain viral attention in the past decade alone. As this typology grows more widespread around the world, communities of these tiny homes have proliferated as well, popping up in North America, New Zealand, East Asia, and more. These communities combine the quaint lifestyle of minimalist living with collective spaces for social interaction, bringing together like-minded families and individuals into fashionable tiny neighborhoods. We will examine several such communities below.
ArchDaily's theme of August 2020, How We Will Live Together, invites readers to contemplate the way we inhabit spaces with those around us. In this article, we address different aspects of coexistence in a world impacted by COVID-19 and the changes that need to be made in order to create a world where everyone has the space to live, work, and grow.
Nowadays, our day to day interactions with those around us hinge on social distancing, leading many to question--is this truly the best solution for curbing the spread of COVID-19? With people worldwide still reeling from the socio-economic upheaval caused by the pandemic, the concept of forcefully distancing yourself from friends and family, especially at at time when you most need them, seems just plain inhuman. While distancing is undoubtedly necessary, it seems more optimistic words would serve to better drive home the message. For example, a slogan like 6ft of Empathy maintains the necessary safety principles without stripping away the social element that humanity thrives on.
Due to population growth and an increase in urban density and real estate prices, architects and urban planners have been pursuing alternatives for new spatial configurations for settling and housing in the cities. The multiplication of shared housing and workspaces is an example of how the field of architecture is adapting to new ways of living in society.
During the next decade or so, our cities will expand at an inconceivable speed. According to the UN’s 2019 World Population Prospects, our planet by 2030 is expected to have 43 megacities —classified as those with more than 10 million inhabitants. Most megacities will be in developing countries. And by mid-century, almost 70 percent of the world’s population will be urbanised, with today’s rate at just over half. Moreover, 90 percent of the urban population growth is expected to happen in Africa and Asia.
This article was originally published on Autodesk's Redshift publication as "Customizable Communities Could Be the Key to the Future of Urban Housing."
London has a fascinating history of urbanization that stretches back to Roman settlement in 43 AD. During the Industrial Revolution and Victorian Era, the city’s population peaked, as did its problems related to population density. The air was filled with soot and smoke, crowded slums were the norm in the inner city, and cholera and other epidemics spread quickly due to inadequate sanitation.
These conditions gave rise to modern urban planning and public-health policy, which now must define what “good density” might look like in the future of urban housing. The UN predicts that by 2050, 66 percent of the world’s population will live in metropolitan areas, up from 54 percent today.
What if your apartment was more than just a place to live? What if it was a catalyst for social interactions? Or what if it removed the everyday tedious tasks of cleaning, paying bills, and buying furnishings? Co-living, a modern form of housing where residents share living spaces, is aiming to do just that.
Co-living is growing in popularity in major cities such as London and New York, where increasing housing prices are forcing residents to look at new and adaptive ways to rent in the city. When we discussed the ambitions and inspirations behind the co-living movement in 2016, it was still a concept that was in its relatively experimental stages. Today, co-living is more focused in its mission, and has found success by pushing people together through a collection of common themes: a yearning for social connection, participation in an increasingly shared economy, and the affordability of a convenient housing solution.
MINI LIVING has revealed plans for its first building-scale project: the transformation of a cluster of six buildings at a former paint factory in Shanghai into an mixed-use “urban hotspot” and co-living facility with space for living, working and socializing.
Partnering with Chinese project developer Nova Property Investment Co., MINI LIVING will fill the industrial shells of the existing buildings with a range of adaptable, program-rich spaces including apartments, rentable workspaces and shared-service areas that will enable “maximum personal flexibility and optimum use of space.”
This article was originally published on Autodesk's Redshift publication (formerly known as Line//Shape//Space), under the title "Live, Work, Play: WeLive’s Live-Work Spaces Reveal a 'Third Place.'"
According to urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg, people need three types of places to live fulfilled, connected lives: Their “first place” (home) for private respite; their “second place” (work) for economic engagement; and their “third place,” a more amorphous arena used for reaffirming social bonds and community identities.
This third place can be a barbershop, neighborhood bar, community center, or even a public square. The desire for these three separate spheres drives how human environments are designed at a bedrock level, but increasing urbanism—as well as geographic and economic mobility—are collapsing these multiple spaces into one. The result is a new hybrid building type: a live-work multiunit dwelling that is home, office, and clubhouse.
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Growing out of the success of coworking, the latest big phenomenon in the world of property is coliving. Like its predecessor, coliving is predicated upon the idea that sharing space can bring benefits to users in terms of cost and community. And, like its predecessor, there are already many variations on the idea with numerous different ventures appearing in the past year, each tweaking the basic concept to find a niche.
There are a lot of existing accommodation types that are “a bit like” coliving—depending on who you ask, coliving might be described as either a halfway point between apartments and hotels, “dorms for adults” or “glorified hostels.” And yet, despite these similarities to recognizable paradigms, countless recent articles have proclaimed that coliving could “change our thinking on property and ownership,” “change the way we work and travel,” or perhaps even “solve the housing crisis.” How can coliving be so familiar and yet so groundbreaking at the same time? To find out, I spent a week at a soon-to-open property in Miami run by Roam, a company which has taken a uniquely international approach to the coliving formula.
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