Room for collision : the key role of communal spaces in multi-generational co-living projects
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2020
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Abstract
"[W]e are facing two drastic, and harmful, developments: a population that grows both older and more socially isolated. From an architectural point of view, I believe co-living projects, in particular, can offset loneliness in the elderly population, and isolation throughout. For my thesis, I have visited multi-generational co-living projects in Mainz and held interviews with current inhabitants, future inhabitants, and the architect of the projects, which are all built and run by one social housing agency. The examples I have visited and based my design on follow the so-called Bielefeld Model [...]. The Bielefeld Model would like to eradicate the notion of separate retirement homes, and rather build a functioning community that brings the whole neighborhood together. As strong as this concept is, during my interviews and accompanying research, I have discovered some room for improvement. The communal room element of the architectural examples I am working with is, so far, limited to a neighborhood café run by the inhabitants. [...] I believe for a community to outgrow its architectural borders and have a positive and community-creating influence on the greater neighborhood, it has to be very strong within itself. This is why I am proposing to add another layer of semi-privacy to the co-living project; something that can exist between the full privacy of individual apartments and the extreme exposure of the neighborhood café. I am proposing more communal rooms - rooms that are not open to the public, like the neighborhood café is, but reserved for use by the internal community. These concentric circles - home, to common room, to café - allow people to comfortably grow their sphere of public life. I believe this work is vitally important because intergenerational co-living projects with well-designed communal spaces carry a strong potential to bring together our fragmented society. [...] The findings of this paper are based on the comparative analysis of selected literature on the topic of co-living. I will first state the history of co-living and offer thoughts as to why it has repeatedly failed. I will then present the Bielefeld Model as a contemporary and promising case study. This case serves not only as a general example of multi-generational co-living, but also as the foundation of my design project. In addition, I will introduce various other contemporary case studies, with a particular focus on their public room program. For a better understanding of the particular case I built my design project into, I conducted interviews with the architect of the building, as well as with current and future inhabitants of comparable projects. In these interviews, I have uncovered perceived flaws and ideas for improvement in multi-generational co-living projects, rooted in the Bielefeld Model."