Cohousing Patterns: Ceiling Height Variety

“A building in which the ceiling heights are all the same is virtually incapable of making people comfortable.”

It is all too often that the Common House is designed and built with the least funds (many communities prioritize the money for individual units) and therefore, the overall enclosure of the Common House is constructed with the idea that a future mezzanine or second floor will be added later. The resulting spaces for dining, conversation, and meal preparation all occur under a single ceiling.

Provide a variety of ceiling heights that are appropriate for the functions. The dining room may want to be a grand space with high ceilings, however, the kitchen will be more functional with lower ceilings. In addition, smaller seating groups for conversation are not inviting if they are located in a cavernous room with the same ceiling height as the dining room.

Bakken, a cohousing community in Northern Denmark, is comprised of duplexes, triplexes and a large common house. In the common house, the dining and seating area all occur under the same ceiling. The seating area is not welcoming and did not encourage residents to linger and talk. However, over half of the dining room floor framing had been installed with the idea that the second-floor mezzanine would be extended. While the project was never completed, the major framing elements were left in place creating an implied ceiling. The tables under this “lower” ceiling felt more intimate.

The height of a ceiling can also determine the intimacy of a space. The ceiling must be proportionate to the size of the room - a small room with a tall ceiling will feel equally uncomfortable as a large room with a low ceiling. The original pattern describes rules of thumb for ideal width-to-height ratios. The acoustics of any room are affected by the ceiling height and room proportion and should be given specific attention during design.

Common Areas at the Heart - Cohousing Patterns

This pattern can be seen at two scales within a cohousing community - the larger scale of site planning as well as the smaller scale of Common House design. As described in the patterns of Activity Node, Local Town Hall, and Central Location, the Common House is at the center of the community and should allow people to naturally pass through or by it during the course of the day.

In the context of space planning for the Common House, the dining room should serve as the common area at the heart. The room should be located such “that people naturally pass through it on their way into and out of the house”. It should be along a common path which people use every day but located to one side so residents are not forced to stop. If they want, they can stop to see what’s happening; and if they desire, they can come right in and settle down. Incorporating the pattern of Alcoves will increase the likelihood of residents to stop because there will be a wider diversity of informal and unprogrammed activities that might occur in the dining room throughout the course of the day.

Circlulation through Common House at Savvaerket

Circulation occurs through Savvaerket Common House

Location facilitates easy drop in at Kæphøj Common House (top of stairs)

Casual seating outside Common House

Community Laundry - Cohousing Patterns

Central laundry facilities are often found in the Common House. Danish communities have devised ways to increase the productivity of the laundry rooms. In nearly all communities, there is a method that allows residents to queue up their laundry in a community washing effort through the course of a day.

How it works: Resident B brings laundry to the Common House and finds the washing machine is busy washing Resident A’s laundry. Resident B sorts his laundry into the appropriate number of baskets, queues up the baskets with prescribed washing instructions (water temperature/cycle, amount of detergent, and drying request), and leaves. Resident C arrives to find that Resident A’s cycle is complete and puts the load in the dryer. Resident B’s load is then placed in the machine using the washing instructions provided. Then Resident C sorts their own laundry and places the basket at the back of the queue. Resident A comes back to collect their dry clothes, transfers Resident B’s load from the washer to the dryer, and starts up Resident C’s load in the washing machine. And so the cycle continues. These images depict some of the ways different communities indicate their preferred washing instructions to their fellow residents.

Wash tags at Ådalen 1

Laundry baskets queued up at Ibsgården

Wash instructions left in basket at Klien

Laundry queue at Leerbjerg Lod

Please Note:

This series of blog posts is focused on explaining common design patterns in cohousing. Grace Kim, a founding principal and owner of Schemata Workshop, has identified patterns applicable to cohousing from "Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander and has added some of her own. The number in brackets [#] refers to Alexander’s pattern numbering system.

Grace's additional patterns pay particular attention to the Common House because its design requires special consideration. As the living room for the community, the Common House sets the initial impression for visitors about what cohousing is, what your community values might be, or the perceived benefits of living in community. Schemata Workshop has analyzed scores of common houses in Denmark and North America to discern what does and does not work. Following Alexander's concept of Pattern Language, Grace has thoroughly documented the necessary programmatic and design elements for a successful Common House.

To learn more about cohousing at Schemata, visit our cohousing page.

Cohousing: A New American Dream

Grace Kim takes the virtual stage at the Seoul Cohousing Symposium to discuss the new American dream home, cohousing.

As loneliness becomes a growing health concern across the globe, people are looking for creative solutions to solve this often overlooked issue. A common cause in America is the lack of community that comes along with the “American Dream Home”. We see this happen in suburbs where, despite proximity, it can be rare for people to get to know their neighbors. Cohousing is centered around community; a place where residents feel support from family and friends, belonging, security, and a sense of wellbeing. Sounds pretty nice, right?

2020: A Year of Resiliency

As the year comes to a close, it’s interesting to look back and realize the dumpster fire that was 2020 helped demonstrate how we have been preparing for Resiliency. While we didn’t know all that 2020 would hold for us, in the years leading up to it, Schemata Workshop put practices into place that have helped us quickly adapt and recover from the disastrous events that occurred this year.

Cloud based server

On March 7, when Governor Inslee suggested we all “stay at home”, we told our staff to bring home what they might need to work from home. The very next day our staff began working from home for what would be the rest of the year.

While some firms struggled that first month to get remote working in place, Schemata was busily completing work on several project deadlines…without skipping a beat. That is because we had switched over to cloud-based services (for hosting our server, software and email) four years prior. Thanks to Approach Technology who set up our custom cloud and had switched us over just months before to a faster AWS-based platform, we had the same access to our projects/software as we did from the office just the day before. But we could work from our homes – on our PCs, iMACs, iPADs or whatever platform we chose. We could sit on the couch, at our kitchen tables, or wherever we could find a corner in our homes.  Over time, people came to collect second monitors, chairs, and standing desks to augment their work from home environment.

Undoing Racism

In June, as news of George Floyd’s death, went viral on social media platforms and the nation’s horror/grief/indignation of the many other Black lives lost, people took to the streets in cities across the US…and Schemata Workshop found themselves at ground zero to the protests in Seattle. With angry battles between protestors and police escalating nightly with tear gas and flash bombs, just one block away from our office, we had heartfelt conversations to help us grieve and process; and to inspire each other to action rather than fall into despair and hopelessness.

At the end of 2019 and early 2020, Schemata Workshop had sent all of their staff to anti-racism trainings offered by the People’s Institute For Survival and Beyond hosted locally through the Housing Development Consortium. By June, the words of the trainers and our flawed constitution came hurtling at us with the fury as the names of the Black lives recently lost were shouted in the streets in marches and protest. Many of us at Schemata marched, we tweeted, we donated, and made public statements – AND we debated the performative nature of all this. We decided as an office it was important to actively, vocally be allies and co-conspirators  - in our profession and in our lives. We will seek out and uplift the work and voices of Black and Indigenous people who work in our allied disciplines; and we have found meaningful ways to collaborate to build capacity for Black and Indigenous professionals in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction industry.

Personally, my cohousing community has been a major source of daily support. Established as a community in 2010, our nine families moved into a building designed by Schemata Workshop in 2016. In the four years since, we have deepened our connections and formalized the way we live collaboratively in our densely urban building.

Cohousing

As the pandemic was unfolding in Washington, we met twice weekly on Zoom from March through May -  we shared information - allaying fears or cautioning those who might not have read as much. We developed protocols for disinfecting the whole building daily, managing outside deliveries, and helping each other reduce trips to the grocery store. Over the summer we figured out how to socialize while maintaining physical distance and wearing our masks, and these practices have helped us transition into the fall and now winter (eating dinners and watching movies outside but in the protection of our covered breezeway or under the tent on the roof). The proverbial “cup of sugar” or eggs or any other ingredient shows up at your doorstep within minutes of texting out a request. And deliveries of baked goods, tamale kits, and pesto are as common as the frequency of birthday celebrations – with singing from our balconies and cake picked up in the courtyard. The children play together in the courtyard and their voices float up to our open windows (rain or shine) and the adults gather in small groups to exercise, converse or plan out community business on our rooftop or balconies.  We have firmly adopted the Norwegian attitude of friluftsliv – “There is no bad weather, only bad clothes.” Sitting outside in our parkas, gloves and hats in the company of our neighbors sure beats sitting home being lonely.

In 2020, the Cohousing Association worked hard to offer numerous webchats for people talk about the effects of the pandemic and online conferences to help people find cohousing near them or find resources to help them manage their existing communities.

Office Manager

One of the people I’m most grateful for this year is our Office Manager Margaret Tyson. Over the past four years she has grown into her position on the Leadership Team.  On March 7 she insisted we send people home right away and begin remote work.  Then promptly applied for Federal PPP loans. She has worked closely and tirelessly with our banker at Umpqua, our bookkeeper/accountant invantage3, and our tax accountant Mark Long to make sure we have spent the funds according to rules and advised us on strategic changes in staffing and expenses. She has led our “back to work” task force (which is recommending remote work through 2021) and has duly served in a HR capacity. 

So I’d like to close with gratitude for what 2020 actually did bring - the Great Pause. Outside of work, I spent time baking sourdough bread, binge-watching shows, staying local, enjoying our home, the generosity of friends, and most importantly, found time with my 13-year old daughter.

We are at the close of 2020 - we made it to the end! And now I’m ready for 2021- bring it on!

- Grace Kim, AIA

Principal + Founder, Schemata Workshop

resilience

[rəˈzilyəns]

NOUN

resilience (noun) · resiliency (noun) · resiliencies (plural noun)

1.     the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

Resilience has been referenced a lot in the context of Sustainability these past few years. Sustainability and resilience can work together in the economy, construction, transportation systems, systems of government and almost any other system in existence. Resilience is the ability to recover from a disaster that could have been prevented or mitigated with sustainable practices.