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COHOUSING design studio, workshops, exhibition  COHOUSING DESIGN STUDIO Cohousing Architecture Upperpool Design Studio, Semester 1, 2008 Studio leader: Louis Sauer Open the online Cohousing Studio publication
RMIT Architecture Lower Pool Design Studio Semester 01, 2008 Studio Leaders: Louis Sauer excerpted from: Urban Livability Collective Exhibition Catalogue, Yarra Sculpture Gallery, October, 2008 Curator: Sue Anne Ware, RMIT Design Research Institute Exhibited Students: Mark Hocking & Alex Hore Nik Elani Nik Aminaldin & Vanni Meozz Simon Wright & Adrian Banuelos CATALOG ESSAY COHOUSING Louis Sauer During the fall of 2007, the RMIT Cohousing Forum and a RMIT undergraduate architectural design studio collaborated to produce a range of spatial alternatives to help define (or re-define) the characteristics of cohousing. Also, it was hoped to demonstrate that physical examples of housing design alternatives might increase the participants’ interest and involvement in developing a specific Cohousing site. The key issues addressed were: privacy and shared places, aesthetics, affordability, sustainability and management. Although there was broad agreement that cohousing could offer advantages over the normal marketplace, there evolved strong differences about the size and character of the private homes, what communal activities and services would be useful and how these would be paid for in both the initial purchase as well as their day-to-day management. A most interesting finding was that the brief of some participants essentially resulted in a re-interpretation of cohousing development to provide them a physical form to isolate them from the surrounding neighbourhood. The Cohousing Forum facilitator selected three sites and provided individuals who participated as clients for the students. Participant households met with a student team in their homes and the students redesigned the home to the participant’s desire. The student cohousing site designs were reviewed at three Forum meetings: at the beginning, the mid-point and at the semester’s completion. At these reviews the participants discussed their thoughts and gave the students direction for the kind of houses, community building and for the overall site. During the first Forum meeting, the participant and student dialogue produced a range of issues and concerns. This provided guidance for the students’ spatial design but they also served as a framework to focus the participant’s discussions. Interestingly at the Forum reviews, a few outspoken individuals most often commanded attention and overwhelmed differing thoughts. As a result, it was difficult to ascertain whether the verbal decisions were representative of all Forum participants. The decisions were organized around the participants for each specific site. The three selected sites are in the Melbourne metropolitan area: Preston, Belgrave and Hastings. Each site had unique physical, programmatic and participant characteristics. The participants for all sites wanted a community building with at least a kitchen and dinning room to accommodate all residents at a sitting plus some guests. They desired additional rooms for a separate children’s play, a small office, toilets, a combined workroom, tool storage and resident lockable storage and a building-site maintenance room. All participants want at least two motel-like rooms for hire in each site’s community building. Preston’s site is vacant, flat with no trees and is in an established single-family-detached housing neighbourhood characterized by California bungalow house types. A public bus stop is on its main street. The designs acceptable to the Preston participants accommodated 22 terrace houses lining three of the site’s streets. Parking is to be combined in lot separate from the houses. Each two-story house should have minimal private yards. The participants want a single community open space with all houses facing it. Visitors are to access all of the residents’ houses from the community building and not from the adjoining streets, which the houses face. The Belgrave site is full with mature trees, very narrow, long, and steeply sloped, The owner of the site occupies a single family detached house on the site and is actively promoting the site’s use for cohousing. Council will restrict the site’s development to add an additional 10 houses. The participants want the houses to be one and two stories high with each to have direct car access, parking and private yards. The houses should be as isolated from one another as possible. The large and flat Hastings site is on the outskirts of the town and adjacent to a caravan park and two-story established single-family detached houses of various conventional developer/builder styles. Unlike the other two sites, there were no participants for the Hastings site who were interested in living there. Its participants represented various Mornington Peninsula Shire’s council staff and one person advocating senior housing. Thus, the senior housing use for this site came from council and not from any future users. In spite of four distinct designs prepared for the Forum’s review, no articulate brief was established. A striking feature was the Preston participants desire not to have any front doors facing public streets in order to separate themselves from visits from unknown people. They did not want their mail to be delivered to their front doors. They stated they did not want anyone knocking on their front door. Although they did not state it directly, this strongly suggests a desire to avoid participation with their neighbours. It is clear that for this group of participants, cohousing is perceived as a way to separate themselves from people different from themselves. In a similar vein, the Belgrave participants wanted to live in the site’s heavily landscaped environment but not see others, or be seen by others, living on the site. Although not spoken, one got the sense that they felt any oversight would intrude upon their appreciation of nature. Thus, with the Belgrave as with the Preston participants, for them to obtain a sense of physical isolation appears to be a dominant value for the development of cohousing. Although the participants for the Preston and Belgrave sites’ were very interested in the possibility to live in their selected cohousing site, no statements of positive shared community values were enunciated. This was a very surprising result because the normal understanding of what distinguishes cohousing from the conventional marketplace housing is that the people who desire to live in cohousing typically hold a common vision for social, political and/or spiritual values. It is interesting that the shared values binding a group of cohousing participants together should seek to negate neighbouring and isolate themselves. Cohousing in this context takes on an essentially anti-social bias and the buildings become a kind of a fortress. Could it be that the typical suburban house plan, where the areas for active family socialization is designed to take place in the back of the house and in the back yard, is a very basic part of our contemporary culture? In past times, the street was the place for the celebration of community life and the house acted as a transition, and not a barrier, between public and private life. Could cohousing here in Melbourne be transforming its traditional value of engaging and sharing together to a defensive idea of protection from any others? Regardless of this unexpected interpretation of the co-housing idea, it is clear that the use of architectural design is an excellent device to obtain dialogue and to uncover the characteristics that people would like to have for their housing. Exhibited Projects:  Simon Wright & Adrian Banuelos
     FORUM Cohousing Forum RMIT Building 8, Sat 8 March, Sat 19 April, Sat 14 June 2008 Forum Director: Hans Tilstra RMIT Participants: Cohousing Architecture Upperpool Design Studio students, Semester 1, 2008 Studio leader: Louis Sauer Partners: Melbourne Cohousing Network Resources: Cohousing Melbourne Discussion List  Cohousing Forum presentations  Lou Sauer (left) and Cohousing Forum client  Louis Sauer Associates, Penn's Landing Square, Philadelphia Louis Sauer Practice: Louis Sauer Associates, Philadelphia (1961-1979) Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at Carnegie-Mellon University (1979-1985) Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Colorado (1985-89) Practice: Director of Urban Design, Daniel Arbour and Associates, Montreal (1989-1996) Louis Sauer is a prolific practicing architect whose extensive body of work across the 1960's and 70's in the USA focused on innovative low-rise high-density housing and community developments. He subsequently took on a series of high profile academic leadership roles as the Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at Carnegie-Mellon University (1979-1985), and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Colorado (1985-89). He is currently based in Melbourne. He has led an RMIT Architecture Upperpool Design Studio with Mel Dodd in Semester 1, 2007 on community architecture and urban design, an RMIT Architecture Lowerpool Design Studio on community housing in Semester 2, 2007 and an RMIT Architecture Lowerpool Design Studio with Hans Tilstra on Cohousing in Semester 1, 2008. Louis Sauer - Wikipedia Profile Jim Morgan, The Work of Louis Sauer, Toshi Jukatu Japanese Press, 1980 - website with book extracts including a critical essay and detailed design project documentation Louis Sauer Associates - design project information Antonino Saggio, "Absorbing Venice: Low-rise High-density Housing by Louis Sauer", in G. De Carlo, C. Occhialini a cura di Ilaud, Territory & Identity, Comune di Venezia-Maggioli editore, Santarcangelo Romagna, 1998 pp. 74-79 RADIO INTERVIEW  Audio Podcast: The Architects-Louis Sauer.mp3 Louis Sauer interviewed by Simon Knott and Rory Hyde The Architects - Show 131 - Louis Sauer RRR Radio Show: The Architects Tue, 23 October 2007 Related projects: HASTINGS KINGS CREEK MASTER PLAN Lowerpool Design Studio Semester 1. 2007 Studio leaders: Mel Dodd and Louis Sauer CARLTON HIGH-DENSITY LOW-RISE HOUSING Lowerpool Design Studio Semester 2, 2007 Studio leader: Louis Sauer HOUSING TRANSFORMATIONS: Low-rise High-density Housing in Footscray Upperpool Design Studio Semester 2, 2008 Studio Leaders: Louis Sauer and Anna Tweeddale Contact: architecture@rmit.edu.au | ||||||||
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