I get the impression that there is another benefit here. Each tenant has their own space to be responsible for. It's small enough to manage but maybe brings a sense of ownership that would be lacking in a regular municipal type shelter or shared apartment block.
For an application where you would expect shared spaces for kitchen/bath/etc, and a trade-off of comfort vs capacity, it is. It is higher than other family shelters. Which could be unused space, or perhaps colocated adminstration, or whatever. It wasn't a complaint, just an observation.
Why not seal off the apartment? There's pretty much no downside, so I don't think it really says much (especially assuming ~2 people regularly use it...).
I live on a boat, which has quite a lot of similarities to this. I have even less livingspace than these houses, but I've managed to fit everything I need and more into it. The marina I live in has a clubhouse which is the social hub, much like the common space that's talked about in the article.
Although the circumstances are very different (I live where I do entirely by choice, and don't suffer any of the other problems that I presume homeless people might) the physical living space is comparable, so I'll offer an opinion:
- Living in a small space is much less of a problem than people think. You quickly get used to it. You tend to be outside more though (which I think is a good thing)
- If you do live in a small space light is important. Small spaces without natural light don't work. I suspect that's one of the architectural reasons why the houses are seperate. The same goes for having a semi-private outdoor area.
- A common space is great because you meet other people. Again, the circumstances are very different but I've really enjoyed meeting people I can now call friends in our clubhouse.
- When living in a small space you have less belongings for obvious reasons. This is a good thing, which surprised me. Tyler Durden from Fight Club is spot on when he says "The things you own end up owning you"
This is a great project, and I hope it succeeds and spreads.
While neat this seems to offer zero advantages in reality vs. traditional housing, unless you're a lone hermit living away from everyone else.
Assuming you have 10-20 people to house, each person having their own dome seems less efficient than building a more traditional house with shared kitchen, bathroom, etc. facilities, since the dome cannot contain those, at least without scaling up significantly at which point its utilization of space becomes really inefficient.
EDIT:
To clarify I'm assuming that:
A) He's living a commune with this, and sharing cooking/bathroom facilities with others. Thus my comment abotu 10-20 people to house.
B) The point is efficiency/ease of housing people. I don't think a bunch of individual (or 2-3 person domes) is any more efficient than one or two traditional houses to hold everyone and all the facilities needed.
Personally I disagree. You get some economy of scale the more people you rent with, because at any given time a lot of people will be out and about or in their rooms. So each individual gets to enjoy a lot more of the shared area (except maybe the kitchen; there are probably enough bathrooms and it's not hard to figure out how to share those). I'm thinking about things like patios/yards, living rooms, home theaters, exercise rooms.
This is the good thing about shared facilities like this: the cost per-unit is really low because there's so many units to share the cost of just a few things like this (or an exercise room, a game room, etc.), and so much space is saved by sharing these things among hundreds of units. But most residents don't use them most of the time, so for the occasional users, they have it available for the 2x a year they want it, and the regular users don't usually feel crowded.
For a while now, I’ve been thinking about collective living arrangements specifically geared toward communities like hackers. I'm a member of the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View and its just awesome to hang out with creative people with whom I have a lot in common.
Technology and creative thinking can both increase shared housing's quality and affordability, even in expensive cities.
One thing that could be done with a large space is repurpose most of it for business tenants during the day. And for tenants themselves who might like to have space to work during the day very close to where they live.
This might be accomplished using moving walls that enable you to compress bedrooms like Gary Chang does in his apartment:
There would also locked storage in kitchen and bathroom and systems and personnel to encourage and maintain cleanliness.
The idea is to reduce the costs of things when you aren’t using them, but still maintain privacy and security. Tenants could also share many things they don’t use often, like tools, thus reducing the amount of storage space each person needs.
There would be a system that rents the space out during the day and you would pay a fixed price that covers your compressed room 24/7 and uncompressed for, say, 8pm – 8am weekdays or whatever suits you. Then the remaining space would be leased, with some auctioned off real time so that you can always stay home when you’re sick. And you'd pay less when you're on vacation.
Overall, the purpose is to give young, single people the opportunity to live in a clean, secure, supportive situation at a great price even in a high cost area.
I think the intent here is to provide a very basic shelter, basically a place to sleep, without a kitchen or a bathroom. I assume there would shared bathroom facilities on site.
Building (or other) codes generally require private bathrooms and kitchen areas in new residential construction.
No sharing walls with noisy neighbors, no stairs, a small yard right outside your door, easier for pets, no parking fees + park right in front of your house, and so on. There's downsides, of course, but they do have advantages over apartments.
Are you considering the scale of the building and the lack of access to outside? Imagine, the pod next to your's, deep in the interior of the building with only two entrances/exits, accidentally starts a fire. Or houses a crazy person who keeps defecating in their waste-bin. Just imagine the CO2 levels and lack of oxygen, even without the other environmental issues!
I, too, value communal shared spaces. A giant block with no natural light or fresh air, for $300k per tiny unit, is not the way to do it.
Managing the rental (or ownership) comes to mind first. The rest of the logistics surrounding "stock the kitchen with coffee and healthy snacks" comes next. The "have more control over how it was arranged" part also comes with "need to make a bunch of decisions you didn't have to before".
(Essentially just playing devil's advocate; not trying to argue for or against the idea. I'm sure many people would prefer such a set up and many others would not.)
That might be bad for your mental health but I know several people who enjoy that, and prefer the privacy of having a tiny personal space rather than a larger shared house. It’s important to get the right people into these.
I find it odd that whoever build those houses decided to make tiny apartments instead of larger shared ones. For cooking, having a shared kitchen - even if used by many families - would probably help a lot, specially since it's cheaper and easier to make a big communal meal than having to cook for each family.
I have thought a lot about shared living spaces and I just can't see it working without a really strong sense of community otherwise everyone would just think "not my problem" when there is a mess.
I don't really understand what the drastic difference there is supposed to be. If you want to use all the units as a shared living space, just leave the common-area connecting doors propped open. This is functionality that many duplex and triplex units already have.
Yep, it's actually a criteria I look at when I choose a house/apartment. It's a nice "third space" where community events often happen, where you can meet new people (easier before COVID), and where it's easy to spend an afternoon working or reading. Kind of like a park but with dedicated food, drink, and bathrooms.
Shared walls often mean you know when your neighbours are in, when they're watching TV, when they argue and what they're arguing about, when the dog is barking or the toddler having a tantrum, and even when they're walking to the other room.
Even insulation benefits can't be relied on as shared walls are often uninsulated and overall insulation in apartment blocks often bare minimum to code rather than adequate.
Last, but not least, I would take a small garden over an apartment without that's twice or three times the size. You're even likely to see neighbours a lot more if you have a garden to potter in, and the dog has somewhere. :)
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