Cohousing

The Harvest as Resiliency

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In today’s rapidly urbanizing world, resilience is no longer just a buzzword but necessary for a thriving community. At Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing (CHUC) in Seattle, resiliency is not an afterthought but an instigator for the community-built project. CHUC is a lived prototype for architects and Schemata Workshop co-founders, Grace Kim and Mike Mariano, who live upstairs and work in the street-level office space. In this 5-story building, nine households create a thriving, interdependent community rooted in shared values, meals, and mutual support. Privacy and the individual are supported by the knowing and understanding of each other. As with any group of people, it’s imperfect and requires commitment and working together. This is not just architecture or just housing, but a vision for urban living that fosters connection and resilience for generations to come.

Ariel Footage from Uytae Lee’s About Here on Youtube

Resilience goes beyond sustainability. Grace and Mike heard an architect at an international conference once describe sustainability like a personal relationship. If I said I had a sustainable relationship with a partner, that doesn’t sound like it’s very positive. If I have a resilient relationship, then we’re able to weather the ups & downs of a relationship, and a community can be resilient during environmental shocks and stresses. Resilience is embedded in every design decision now reflected in the building that nine families have called home for nearly a decade.

A recent post on our whiteboard for the garden reminded us of resiliency in the context of the harvest.

We harvest daylight through our community courtyard at the heart of our community, bringing daylight and cross-ventilation to the homes. There is no enclosed, windowless corridor here; residents move throughout the community on covered outdoor balconies. Resident life is visible in this intimate courtyard space, plants draping over balconies, the sound of resident life coming through open doors and windows, and activity on every level.

We harvest energy from the sun through the photovoltaic panels on our upper roof. We’re a small site, and the payback on solar panels is long due to our (currently) low-cost hydroelectric power provided by one of the cleanest utility providers in the nation.

And, of course, the garden harvest on the lower roof. Photosynthesis generates fresh food that nourishes our community – produce used on site by residents, and an entire bed of produce cared for by one resident family is delivered to the nearby Byrd-Barr Place food bank.

Grace shares her lived experience and work in cohousing in her 2017 TED Talk about how cohousing can make us happy and live longer.

As profiled in the book Ideal Cities, CHUC exemplifies the kind of intentional community that contributes to the neighborhood social fabric while addressing environmental challenges.

CHUC is not just a place to live but a model of what’s possible when architecture, community, and sustainability intersect with intention.

Learn more about CHUC at our monthly Saturday tour!

Click the link and use code RESILIENCE for free tickets until the end of 2025!

Cohousing Patterns: Ceiling Height Variety

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“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

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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.

Community Laundry - Cohousing Patterns

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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.

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

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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?