Vanity Trends (Vanity Fair Italy, November 2023 Issue pp. 29-33)
CO-HOUSING BY SILVIA PAOLI
SEE YOU AT DINNER
The illustration tells the exact dynamic of an apartment building where everyone has their own private home but there are shared spaces: from the gym to the rooftop garden and, always, a dining room with a communal kitchen, because meals together are at the heart of this lifestyle.
A private home all for yourself and common areas for intermingling, bonding, and being able to rely on everyone's strengths. Grace Kim, a leading international expert on cohousing, talks to us about the state of cohousing today, and predictions for the future. And the constant goal: to defeat isolation.
DREAM TEAM
Grace Kim and her husband Mike Mariano are the founders of Schemata Workshop, a Seattle-based architecture firm that pursues the goal of empowering communities through architecture.
Loneliness. It's the first word Grace H. Kim, an architect, utters in her celebrated 2017 Ted Talk on co-housing (and the pursuit of happiness). Founded with her husband and business partner Mike Mariano of Schemata Workshop, an architecture firm in Seattle, she is one of the greatest international experts of this “lifestyle” concept that promotes collaborative and communal living among residents - one she herself has been living for the past 7 years as a founding member of CHUC (Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing), a 9-family condominium in Seattle, which on the ground floor houses her own architecture studio, and is spread over 4 floors, with a shared rooftop garden, an interior courtyard visible by all the apartments and a kitchen with dining room for weekly communal dinners.
Since the concept was launched (Denmark, 1960s), co-housing has spread across Northern Europe, and then around the world, essentially repurposing an age-old model of families of multi-generations living in separate units but proximate to others. That model has been replaced with “the unfortunate paradigm of the American Dream that the United States has exported”, says Grace Kim, connected via Zoom from Seattle, “that is, the idea that the nuclear family, should live alone in a detached home, without the benefit of family or community nearby to support them. And this is occurring in countries that have had long traditions of multi-generational families living together.”
Which is also true in Italy, which was also the primary inspiration for co-housing for Mike, Grace's husband, as a university student traveling to Milan. She says: “[While traveling with a fellow student Mike visited their family friend], a doctor, who lived in a 4-story building where, at street level, he had his clinic. The doctor lived on the top floor, the mother in the apartment below, and the brother in below her. And the last apartment was rented out. They all lived in the same building and each evening had dinner at one family’s home, [rotating the responsibility of hosting and preparing the meal]. My husband saw for the first time in Milan, the idea of living in a building together in this collective way.”
However, creating it outside of the family involves selecting neighbors who often don't know each other. “It is difficult for a group of friends to find themselves perfectly aligned when one launches the idea of co-housing: family or professional lives may be in different phases. A group of friends once told me: "When our husbands are dead, we will [buy a building] and move in together." It was not a plot to kill of their spouses, but I cite it as an example to say that it is difficult for friends to be ready at the same time”. Here's how it works. Co-housing begins with a group of people (the founders) - there are three to six families who decide to open up to a larger network wide enough to be able to carry out this project and then there is a recruitment process for new members, which can be difficult because not everyone is in the same financial or stage of life to be ready to join a forming group. What is most important is finding people who share the desire to create this connection. It is fundamental to have the same intentions, to be honest and open - it is not important to be life-long friends.
”THE MINISTRY OF LONELINESS EXISTS IN GREAT BRITAIN – LONELINESS WAS A GLOBAL PANDEMIC ALREADY BEFORE COVID. AFTER, THE SITUATION GOT WORSE. [COHOUSING] IS A CONCRETE ANSWER, TO CONNECT PEOPLE.”
There is not only the possibility of cooperating and socializing in a building with shared spaces. More recent cohousing projects offer opportunities for new life experiences, almost social experiments, which would otherwise be impossible. Grace Kim recounts with enthusiasm: “In Korea there is a co-housing, it's called Oneul, which was founded by a Christian church. In addition to being an architecturally interesting project, there the homes are not occupied by nuclear families, but as unrelated households - that is, adolescent children can choose to live with other adults in the community who are not their parents. They are in the same building with their families, and still have mentors and elders around, but they live in different homes. This is advanced social change for Koreans, who are culturally accustomed to value of privacy and family hierarchy; but this living arrangement has existed in Denmark for many decades. There they have co-housing communities in which teenagers, in the most difficult and conflicted time of their relationship with their parents, can live on their own and have the support of other adults outside the family. This also allows those without children to contribute the development of a young adult during formative years, and for parents to be present and check in on them without the conflict of living in the same messy house with them”.
In short, different concepts of “family” or social models are being experimented with, as well as solutions for affordability in a market where housing has become unattainable. “The Bridge Meadows project, in Portland, Oregon”, says Grace, “is very unique. It is comprised of foster families who need support, and elderly people who receive subsidized rent in exchange for some help with the children - homework, spending time with them after school. This is with the aim of creating strong bonds between young people and the elderly, because at 18 years of age, the children can no longer legally stay with their foster family and find themselves alone or on the streets. In this way they have developed deep bonds with elders who can remain close to them in the future”.
The purchasing models also have different variations. “In Germany they are called Baugruppen (literally construction group) and the German government invested a lot, about ten years ago, in support of these initiatives”, says Kim. In practice, the so-called “housing cooperatives” are created where the members pool the resources, purchase the lot, participates in the development, until each one settles in their own home.” Other very beautiful examples in Europe are those of Cohousing Projects by Federico Bisschop. “I can't select one in particular because they are all exciting, from the renovations of old buildings to new construction”.
“IT IS NOT ESSENTIAL THAT THE PROJECT MUST ONLY INVOLVE FRIENDS: YOU NEED TO FIND PEOPLE WHO HAVE THE SAME INTENTIONS, WHO ARE HONEST, OPEN. WHO SHARE THE SAME OBJECTIVE”
Children are always at the center of cohousing projects. However, the elderly are the largest segment of the population. Is it possible to also involve the most fragile ones?
“If the family is living alone [in a single-family home] it is increasingly difficult to accommodate. If it is a group of 5 or 20 families and there are grandparents with special needs, they can share resources and the elderly have peers to be with.” But what happens if a resident has senile dementia? “We need to discuss it collectively, to understand what type of assistance is appropriate and at what point the family should hire a caregiver or transfer the elderly person to an advanced care facility. Now, it's possible the family is extremely private and does not want others to tell them what to do, and that is understandable. However, there is also the possibility that the community decides to support the family, giving a bit of relief to the caregivers, because they know that the neighbors can take help look after the aging individual - if they find him outside a little confused, for example, they can take him home.”
What should be the distinctive elements of a space dedicated to seniors or people with special needs?
“Our studio has recently started designing a very large project, which is not strictly co-housing: it has 200 housing units of which 20% will be occupied by people with an intellectual or developmental disability. We are still at the initial stage, but we will certainly pay attention to wayfinding – signage and colors (for the different functions of the buildings), and we will take great care of the lighting and acoustics.”
Do you believe that overcoming isolation is still the aim of co-housing?
“I read that Great Britain has a Ministry of Loneliness. Japan and Sweden were reporting before Covid that isolation was already a global pandemic, and afterwards the situation has only gotten worse. I remember a neighbor saying during the early days of the covid shut down: ‘I haven't had any physical contact for months - not a hug or even someone taking my hand.’ This is what is needed, a heartfelt connection – that is what people look for and find in co-housing”.
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