eCO-Housing

 

 

The aim of this design study is  to pro­pose a spe­cific case of “co-housing” that expands the term to mean the coop­er­a­tive dwellings of humans and non-human residents.

In regard to our nat­ural world, humans are con­di­tioned to feel sep­a­rated from nature and yet we humans have innate pro­cliv­ity toward every­thing in the bios­phere, this con­cept of the “instinc­tive bond between humans beings and other liv­ing sys­tems” is called bio­philia. 3

This comes from the idea that sus­tain­able design should be about ful­fill­ing needs rather than nec­es­sar­ily ‘pro­duc­ing an object’. The design should be decided in respect of the whole sys­tem and con­text, within which it shall exist, some thing that is spe­cific to place.

There is a mount­ing theme in sus­tain­abil­ity that cre­ates cul­tures not based on tech­no­cratic means but socio-environmental means, these are rep­re­sented by phrases like sus­tain­able liv­ing, eco­log­i­cal liv­ing, perma-culture, co-housing, con­ser­va­tion devel­op­ment, co-ops; all of these threads are based on ways of life and social habits rather than energy effi­cient technology.

The idea of these is to pro­mote coop­er­a­tion and respect amongst humans and non-humans, hold­ing fast to the idea that humans and non-humans are interdependent.

Cer­tain types of devel­op­ment are more “sus­tain­able” than oth­ers, Andrew Light states that “densely pop­u­lated human com­mu­ni­ties are inher­ently more envi­ron­men­tally sus­tain­able than non-densely pop­u­lated human com­mu­ni­ties, all other things being equal.  Envi­ron­men­tal­ists should focus on defend­ing and pro­mot­ing urban den­sity as a com­po­nent of sus­tain­abil­ity.”13

Not only is den­sity addressed in this project, but also how peo­ple inter­act with each other and nature. Con­ser­va­tion devel­op­ment and co-housing: two hous­ing meth­ods I chose for their strength to take into account pre­serv­ing nature, respect­ing nature, cul­ti­vat­ing nature (such as devel­op­ing larger, con­nected net­works of green space), resource shar­ing, and social­iza­tion networks.

They also attempt to chal­lenge the cul­tur­ally entrenched estab­lish­ment of iso­lated sin­gle fam­ily homes, which I would con­sider, a tech­no­log­i­cal hege­mony, “a form of dom­i­na­tion so deeply rooted in social life that it seems nat­ural to those it dom­i­nates.”14

The choices we make, deter­mine our abil­ity to make sus­tain­abil­ity hap­pen, to deter­mine what’s best and for whom (the earth, future gen­er­a­tions, and the masses) can be a daunt­ing task/decision(s). We are talk­ing about the fundamental/early ideas and deci­sions that can lead to a more holis­tic sys­tems think­ing or in con­trast short-term destruc­tive prac­tices, and these get played out by many decen­tral­ized cor­po­ra­tions, busi­ness, orga­ni­za­tions, indi­vid­u­als’ everyday.

So the ques­tions to ask are:

• how to decide what is best?

• How to con­vince some­one to do some­thing else?

• How to find out what to ques­tion in the first place?

• What is “wrong”?

• How to see through the fog of our con­ven­tions and nor­ma­tive practices?

These every­day things can have a tremen­dous effect on our world, cumu­la­tively destroy­ing or cre­at­ing. How do we get to the goal, from here to there?

With the design of co-housing, the con­cept of com­mu­nity asso­ci­a­tions can help develop “a world where com­mu­ni­ties thrive and are built in har­mony with nature, because peo­ple under­stand the con­se­quences of their choices and make deci­sions for their own and the Earth’s ben­e­fit. ”9

Another choice of peo­ple wish­ing for more of a sense of com­mu­nity and empow­er­ment is co-housing; the roman­tic idea of the log cabin in the woods has led to the sub­ur­ban iso­la­tion of our single-family sub­di­vi­sions. Co-housing is inten­tional neigh­bor­hood design, includ­ing res­i­dent design par­tic­i­pa­tion and man­age­ment of the com­mu­nity; social­iza­tion and shar­ing of resources offer a strong sense of com­mu­nity for indi­vid­u­als in the community.

Again, as we see in con­ser­va­tion devel­op­ment, the way in which peo­ple choose to inter­act with oth­ers, via com­mu­nity asso­ci­a­tion, has fos­tered a more effi­cient way of liv­ing, arguably more sus­tain­able than the most energy effi­cient iso­lated sub­ur­ban house, if one takes int account social inter­ac­tion as a sus­tain­able indi­ca­tor, along with the obvi­ous resource shar­ing involved with co-housing.

Together these two con­cepts of com­mu­nity asso­ci­a­tion and con­ser­va­tion devel­op­ment offer oppor­tu­ni­ties for the res­i­dents to cre­ate their way of life, reflect how they want to live, and reject con­ven­tional styles of liv­ing preva­lent in other com­mu­nity asso­ci­a­tions, sub­ur­bia, and devel­op­ment patterns.

1. http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/landwater/land/habitats/hillcountry/

3. 3.Steven Kellert, The Bio­philia Hypoth­e­sis. (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Island Press, 1993).

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website