Some of the most creative and articulate people I have ever met are designers—yet most of us push shapes and type around to help sell stuff for others. Rarely do we get the opportunity to express our own interests or state our own opinions. And when we do, it can turn into quite the paralyzing experience. Topics can feel insurmountable, and the vulnerability of putting yourself into your work can be downright terrifying. We are designers, after all. Not artists. We are supposed to answer questions, not raise them.
For me, there was one particular story I had been curious about for several years—the story of my childhood. I grew up in a communal house in Amsterdam with several adults and other children I was not related to, and I always wondered about their motivations. What inspired them to live communally? And what does living communally really mean anyway?
Before we started work on One Shared House, our interactive documentary about my unusual childhood, I spent several months researching communal living to see if the topic would make for an interesting project. And to my surprise, we were in the midst of a massive communal living renaissance. Communal living had been rebranded to “coliving,” and happy-looking millennials were sharing kitchens, bathrooms, and sometimes even bedrooms with total strangers in cities all over the world. I had unknowingly stumbled upon a booming new start-up industry that touted itself as the ultimate solution against the perils of modern living today.
I asked one of the founders of a popular coliving space in Brooklyn how many applications they typically receive a month.
“Oh God. I don’t know off the top of my head. So many. We can’t keep up with the demand.”
What started off as a personal curiosity became a full-blown project that our studio would work on for the next two years.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF COMMUNAL LIVING
In order to understand the current boom, I first wanted to understand its past. Despite what some of these glitzy new coliving websites may claim, living communally is not a new thing. It’s a pretty common solution to some pretty old problems.
THE BOARDING HOUSE: 1830–1950 (USA)
If you’ve seen the movie Brooklyn, or read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, you know what a boarding house is. As immigrant laborers crowded into cities for jobs, boarding houses were seen as the perfect step between family life and independence.
Living in a boarding house offered a built-in community and surrogate family for people building their social network in a new city. Boarders would typically share a bathroom, toilet, living room, and kitchen, and it was very common to eat all meals together.
By the 1950s, boarding houses were in decline. More people were able to afford their own apartments, thanks to the postwar economic boom, and new laws designed to eliminate brothels (it was made illegal for people in multiple apartments to share a bathroom, for example) effectively killed off the boarding house for good.
THE KOMMUNALKA: 1920–1990 (USSR)
On the other side of the world, Lenin conceived the communal apartment shortly after the Russian revolution in response to a housing crisis caused by rapid urbanization. His plan inspired many architects to design communal housing, making it the first modern example of intentional design for communal living on a mass scale.
Residents of a kommunalka were placed together at random, and shared the hallways, kitchen, bathroom, and telephone. Each family had its own room, which often served as a living room, dining room, and bedroom for the entire family. Wary of theft, people rarely left groceries in the kitchen or personal items in communal spaces. The apartments were completely free of charge until 1991, when most of them were converted into private apartments.
THE LIVING COMMUNITY: 1970–PRESENT DAY
(NORTHERN EUROPE)
European coliving originated in Denmark in 1967 with a newspaper article by Bodil Graae questioning the structure of the nuclear family. The article inspired the Sættedammen coliving project, completed in 1972, which was the first of its kind.
Residents of a living community do not have a common set of beliefs or religion, but instead invest in creating a socially rich and interconnected community. People typically share a bathroom, toilet, living room, kitchen, and outdoor areas. New members are selected by consensus. This same model is used to manage facilities.
COMMUNAL LIVING TODAY
These three historical examples already provide some clues about the needs and benefits of communal living. But why the sudden revival, and especially among millennials—i.e., my generation? What is it about our particular generation that makes communal living so attractive?
Combating Loneliness and High Living Costs
The General Social Survey found that the number of Americans with no close friends has tripled since 1985—basically since the dawn of the Internet. And with the unprecedented high number of millennials working from home, we might be the loneliest generation ever.
Half of American millennials also make less money than their parents did at their age. Chinese millennials are also priced out of big cities, thanks to a widening wealth gap and the slowest economic growth in more than two decades. European millennials are facing the same issues.
Add to that rapid urbanization (it is predicted that by 2030, 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities, up from 54 percent today) and you start to understand why millennials are at the helm of this coliving revival.
Blurred Lines Between Home and Away
Safety, familiarity, relaxation, freedom, and intimacy are the feelings that are most strongly associated with home. And with many of us spending as much time at work as we do at home, some workplaces are designed to appeal to those exact feelings by mimicking home. On the other hand, we also work more from home than ever before, so the needs of work have in turn also entered our private lives. But what does this mean for our emotional attitude towards home?
When polled, only 37 percent of 18–29 year olds said they feel most at home in their own private residence. The rest feel equally at home at cafés or at work, at school, at the gym, at a coffee shop, or even at other people’s homes. This is a big generational shift. I, for example, love the intimate feeling of staying at an Airbnb, whereas my baby-boomer mother thinks staying at other people’s homes is creepy and prefers the anonymity of a hotel.
These shifts in home and away have also caught the attention of architects, and “lifestyle imposed” architectural forms are being considered. Each element of the home is being questioned, and the rise in communal living is offering design opportunities that would never have been possible before.
Moving Away from Ownership
Why do I need to own a car if it is cheaper to use a car-sharing program and it means not having to worry about parking? Why collect music, books, and movies and carry everything around when I can just keep everything in the cloud and access it whenever and wherever I want? My generation has become reluctant to buy homes, cars, music, and luxury goods—instead, we’re turning to services that provide access without ownership.
Rather than paying for something and simply throwing it away when we’re done, we now swap, borrow, and resell goods to extend their value. But it has to be easy and painless. If it becomes hard or annoying then forget about it; we want a service layer that works.
Even though living with roommates has always existed, coliving typically offers a service layer that minimizes the annoyances of living with others and takes away the burden of ownership. It’s one of the main reasons why coliving is so attractive. Common areas get cleaned, utilities get paid, apartments come fully furnished, and you don’t have to show proof of income or sign year-long leases. What people bring themselves usually fits into a couple of suitcases. It’s plug and play from the moment you move in. It’s easy!
IN CONCLUSION
As it turns out, my generation is perfectly suited for communal living. But despite my communal childhood, I now live alone. As I sit in my own giant private apartment in Brooklyn surrounded by all the rarely used stuff I have accumulated over the years, I start to think about all the unused spaces in the big former luggage factory I now call home.
How would my life be different if my building had been designed specifically for coliving? How will our society change if these trends persist and coliving becomes the new normal?