There’s a lot of interest right now in micro apartments. Here is a recent example from New York City. Generally speaking the model is driven by a need to increase housing affordability: shrink the apartments; lower the prices.
To compensate for these smaller units, the buildings are often equipped with larger shared spaces and a desire to create a sense of community.
The below TED talk by architect Grace Kim is an interesting case study of a project that started, first, with a desire for cohabitation. Her thesis is that cohousing can make us happier, less lonely, and more socially connected.
The cohousing community that she profiles is one that she both designed and developed and one that she now lives in and practices architecture out of.
If you can’t see the video below, click here. It’s only 10 minutes. After you’ve watched it, let us know in the comment section below if this is a community you could see yourself being a part of.
https://embed.ted.com/talks/grace_kim_how_cohousing_can_make_us_happier_and_live_longer
I just backed the following project on Kickstarter:
It is a new watch line from two Montreal designers. The brand is called Forest Time Co. There’s so much creative talent in that city.
I was immediately drawn to the focus on minimalism and on high quality materials. That’s a philosophy I can get behind. I plan to go for the black band with copper case.
I know nothing about watch movements, but it’s a “Japanese Miyota.” I assume that’s pretty basic.
I love finding interesting projects on Kickstarter. There’s something about backing a team and their new creation. We should all aspire to make and create more.
At the time of writing this post, they’re about $1,000 shy of their funding goal of $24,000. I hope they reach it by this Sunday. I’m sure they will.
Coworking spaces are big business.
One of the biggest of those companies is WeWork. As of last month (November 2015), the company had raised close to a billion dollars from investors like JPMorgan Chase, Harvard Management, and Benchmark Capital, and was valued at $10 billion. (Remember though, this is in the private not public markets.)
If you’re unfamiliar with coworking spaces, check out this post from The Spaces. It’s a great demonstration of how beautiful these spaces can be.
All of this is interesting because it speaks to the changing nature of work. There are a lot of people freelancing, participating in the “online gig economy” and working on new ideas. And in many of these cases, they don’t want or need traditional office space and/or they want the community that many of these coworking spaces afford – both offline and online.
But it’s not just the office that is changing. It’s also potentially living spaces. Since 2014, WeWork has been talking about their new coliving concept, WeLive. The idea here is to combine smaller living spaces with larger common areas and create an overall live-work community. And they are not the only ones thinking about this.
Below is a building section of what this might look. It’s from a Vornado Realty presentation. They are working with WeWork to deliver their new WeLive concept in Crystal City, Virginia.
It’s so interesting to see this concept come to fruition. Back in 2008 when I was in architecture school, I worked with a classmate of mine and designed a modular coliving apartment building. It was called the Philly Flex Dwelling and it worked like this:
The idea here was to start with standard floor plates and use a structural exoskeleton to minimize interior columns. This way you could insert whatever prefabricated modules you wanted and also re-purpose the structure should you want to change the building’s use in the future.
This is not that dissimilar from what was originally proposed for One Bloor West here in Toronto. Though the goal there was column-free retail spaces.
The yellow spaces are the shared common areas and the remaining spaces are the residential living “pods.” We also designed a “solar skin” that was perfectly tuned to the building’s orientation and location in Philadelphia. The idea here was to maximize winter sun (for heating) and minimize summer sun (to keep the building cool).
That was a fun project to work on.