Better shared house_sample

Better Shared House A study on human relationship and domestic environment

Yoko Chang and Zui Tao Supervised by Gennaro Postiglione 2013.10.

BETTER SHARED HOUSE A Study on Human Relationship and Domestic Environment Zui Tao / Yoko Chang

Politecnico di Milano School of Architecture Master of Science in Architecture

To Piano

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Chapter 5 “Family” of Unrelated People

Contents

Chapter 6 Two Principles Introduction

65

5.1 Small Public 65 5.2 The fluctuation of four space identities 70

part I The phenomenon Chapter 1 As a Fact

79

6.1 Enhance “my place” in individual room 80 6.2 Enhance “our place 2” in common area 81 References 84

2

part III dESIGN

12

1.1 Clarification of the theme 12 1.2 Emerging market and future trend 13 1.3 Reasons of sharing 18

Chapter 2 Widely Reported Problems

Chapter 7 How to Enhance “My Place” in Individual Room 24

2.1 “Bill war” 24 2.2 Facility jam 25 2.3 How clean is clean? 26 2.4 “Borrowing” 27 2.5 Noise 28 2.6 “Guest from hell” 29

Chapter 8 How to Enhance “Our Place 2” in Common Area

Chapter 3 Relationship Management 3.1 Self management 30 3.2 Institutional basis 33 3.3 Conclusion 37 References 38

8.1 General description: Heuristic setting for cooperation 103 8.2 Shared cooking and dining 104 8.3 Soft edge: Transitions from private areas to common areas 106 8.4 Spatial diversity for different activities 107 8.5 Flexible furniture 108 8.6 Sense of openness 109

Chapter 9 One Example

part II ‘Family’ of Unrelated People Chapter 4 Home, Sweet Home

30

43

4.1 Space of intimacy and privacy 43 4.2 Life at home 53 4.3 Three space identities 60 4.4 Conclusion 63

89

7.1 General description: increasing sense of control 89 7.2 Surveillance 90 7.3 Flexible interior 91 7.4 Private sanitary facilities 96 7.5 New Climate: P-P-C Model 97

113

9.1 General strategy 114 9.2 My Place: Enhanced sense of control 120 9.3 Our Place: Heuristic setting for cooperation 126 References 136

103

No wall here Bedroom 1

No roof here

Bedroom 2

2 Better Shared House

Kitchen

3

Bathroom

Figure 1. Interior of Via Conte Rosso 36

Introduction A Story In September 2010, we moved to Milan, bearing the expectation of new life. We came here with Ms. R, our previous school mate studying in another school. We got to know her one month before departure, not only because of being enrolled in the same university, but also for exchanging information on visa application. Yes, it was happy to have one more companion when approaching to an new land.

Mr. M picked us at the central station of Milan, wearing

a white t-shirt, looked handsome and tidy. He was the boyfriend of Ms. R and had come one year prior to us.

Then, we spent four days in a hostel and finally found a place to live for one year: Via Guerzoni 45. More or less six months later, Ms. R was not allowed to enter into the house, by us; after nine months, Mr. M was expelled legally, by us. Everyone got frustrated, especially us.

On the contract, there were three names: M, and we two.

R did not plan to live with us, primarily because she had a free accommodation assigned together with her scholarship, secondly her family didn’t know the relationship, and she didn’t want her parent to know. However, she lived with us, as the significant others of tenant, M. The house was renovated from the studio of an interior designer, Mario, who was also the landlord. Openness is the keyword to describe the house. It is so open that bathroom turns out to be the only enclosed space. There are two sleeping areas: one upstairs loft, opening to the hall since there is no window on the other three sides; one downstairs defined by a large wardrobe, a curtain added afterwards by Mr. M, and two walls.

Visually speaking, it attracted everybody, including us and our guests. However, it did not work. We could see their ‘room’ directly from our ‘room’, and it was always a jungle. Over stimulus was not only visual but lying in every sense. The smoke of Chinese cooking was so strong, even at midnight; Our dream was disrupted by rock and roll music; we felt awkward to use the kitchen with dishes and cups left in the sink. Too shy as we were, we delivered our dissatisfaction by writing letter. Below is the last one.

(Translated from Chinese) Dear Mr. M, This letter will list everything you (and Ms. R) did, that we think are improper, [. . .] Again, the letter is only for you, since R is an unauthorized sub-tenant. Unfortunately, it is the third time to write to you.

Before the first letter:

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5

• You never clean the dustbin before our notice; • You never clean the floor before we complained; • Sometimes, you did not wash public dishes after using; • You put public cups in the sink for several days, with beverage left inside; • R lived here but not the university dorm, and Mario did not know1; • Sometimes, you and R watched video with speaker, laughed loud, when we were studying; • Too much smoke when you cooked.

In between the first and second letter: • R still lived here without informing Mario; • Heavy smoke was not under control; • You still did not clean the dustbin.

In between the second and this letter: • R still lived here without informing Mario; • You brought public dishes into your room and left them there; • Your food decayed in the fridge, you did not control; • You did not pay your rent before we told you; • Heavy smoke was not under control; • You still do not take the responsibility of maintaining common area.

Based on above, we have already told Mario that we want to leave three months prior to the date written on contract. Mario offered two solutions: One is that we all leave, the reason for lawyer could be back to China; Two is that we reasonably ask you to leave, you quit unilaterally.

We chose the first one and discussed with you before, but now, we would like to have your agreement on the second one. [. . .]

This is the worst relationship we have ever had with another person in our life. Till now, we still have the impression that if we were just classmates without living together, everything would be fine. They were nice people! Why did things mess up?

Three months after M’s leaving, we moved out with a

1.

We were told two different rents at the beginning, one for three people, the other one for four.

general discomfort towards there. Perception changed a lot from the first glance one year before.

Next year, living in a tiny studio, we felt quite good for not sharing anymore and having a home-like environment.

However, occasionally, we heard unhappy stories from friends, knowing some situations more desperate: crying landlord, lawyer’s intervention, flatmate trapped by manic depressive, and so on.

All the above urges us to ask what causes disputes and the way of avoiding them. The issue relates to built environment, determines the well-being of residents, and probably has its influence on shaping the future pattern of urban living, serving as the origin of our study.

Figure 2. Exterior of Via Conte Rosso 36.

6 Better Shared House

7

PART I

PART II

PART III

Evidence Basis

Theoretical Basis

Design Suggestion

Summary of the Essay The essay is organized in three sectors. In Part I, we make a grasp of the phenomenon. Part II is composed by an in-depth analysis and modeling. Finally, coherent, comprehensive and practical solutions can be found in Part III. Part I has three chapters. Chapter 1 proves that shared housing market is emerging globally and the housing type itself is widely accepted as a future trend, therefore underpinning the value of this study. The reasons behind are discussed at the end, giving a depth of the appearance.

Zooming into the daily life of flatmates, Chapter 2 presents the most reported problems, being followed by an overview of solutions, as Chapter 3.

Part II aims at discovering the role of built environment in the phenomenon, asking whether it is able to establish a better life of flatmates. In Chapter 4, we try to represent family house from the perspective of sheltering relationship, and further discuss how people continuously shape and reshape the both, addressing the most dynamic facet of home environment. A model composed by three identities of domestic environment, My Place, Our Place 1 and Our Place 2, is prepared for Chapter 5, an inquiry on fluctuations in shared house. How could unrelated people possibly live together in the space for intimacy? What ignites

Figure 3. Structure of this essay.

problems? Adopting the space identity in analyzing shared house, we discover a kind of psychological dissociation in identifying with the space largely because of a home-like environment. Therefore, space redefining ought to make sense. In Chapter 6, two principles of achieving a better shared house are given: enhance My Space by improving the integrity of individual space; enhance Our Place 2 by diminishing spatial features inducing residents to fall into their previous experience.

In Part III, the first two chapters present two categories of strategy in practicing two principles respectively.

Each strategy is followed by one or more case studies. A design project can be found in Chapter 9. On one hand, it provides reader an integrated and comprehensive example, one the other hand, it helps us evaluate the previous establishment.

Methodology The phenomenon is illustrated mainly based on second-hand materials: Demographic data collected from national census and shared housing agency; Survey and interview conducted by agency, university administration, and individual. Besides, we also adopt some first-hand materials like interviewing Japanese shared house agencies, several flatmates in Milan and our own experience. The attention of using such materials is especially paid on their authenticity, geographical plurality, and necessarily multiple source.

Grounded on social science, including Barrington Moore’s research on privacy and intimacy and Antony Giddens’s research on the transformation of intimacy, we are able to reveal the essence of family house referring to afford human relationship.

For having an insight of family life performing in domestic environment, phenomenological and environmental-psychological approach is used, referring to Altman and Dovey’s theory on appropriation, and

8 Better Shared House Relph’s interpretation of placeness and placelessness. The perception of any given environment, on one hand, serves as beholder’s inward experience, on the other hand, shape one’s behavior outward, towards physical setting and the relationship. It changes all the time. In understanding so, we resort to cognitive science. Established by Daniel Kahneman, two mechanisms of human thinking, system 1, unconscious and less demanding, and system 2, conscious and filled with effort lead us to find the space identities fluctuating in family house and further shared house.

Backed by Richard Sennett’s advocation on cooperation, we believe in the possibility and benefit of realizing among flatmates, bringing us our two principles at the end of Part II. We consider the two principles ought to be open source, meaning anybody, landlord, agency, designer, and flatmate, could contribute ideas, while we can still provide some strategies ahead based on ad-hoc case studies and our experience of architectural design.

Acknowledgment Bearing the earnest hope of improving the well being of residents in shared house, we decided to face the challenge, being a wholly freshman of developing a discourse. We are accompanied by considerable difficult moments largely due to reversion of working flow, lack of academic training, shortage of related knowledge and language barrier.

Despite many carelessness and amateurish methods we made, we still hope that it would be valuable to academic and practical fields, not matter how small it will be.

During the whole process, we bear the deliberate supervision of Prof. Gennaro Postiglione. Without his critics, this essay could be ended with a much more naive piece. We have to express our sincerely gratitude to him.

Also, we would like to thank Prof. Yasushi Asami from Tokyo University and Prof. Grazia Concillio, although not being formally involved, they gave us some suggestions on

9 shaping the theme. Keiko Sasaki from Oak House kindly offered us first hand material, which may otherwise not accessible publicly. We sincerely thank her for her help. We also want to thank Professor Roberta Cucca who helped us on Part I significantly. For those many colleagues and friends, who were bothered by us for offering ears to the informal presentation and minds on discussion, we own debt from you.

11

part I The phenomenon

For a long time, we have an impression that share housing is a prevailing phenomenon around the world, especially in big cities. Students, young workers, immigrants and so on, bearing their dreams of future, explore in cities. Just like agglomeration accelerates the efficiency of city life, living together is a rational and effective solution for whom housing cost could occupy the biggest portion of living expenditure, best exemplified by the low purchasing power of young people but also due to other reasons.1 Lived in shared houses for twenty-one years and being a guide of surviving in shared living, Annamarie Pluhar concludes that the most common reason of choosing this living mode is that “you need a place to live and you can’t afford to live alone”2 Unrelated people live together, become acquainted, end as friends, or merely greet everyday, trying to avoid each other, as worth as mess everything up then change a place. More or less we all, if not experienced by ourselves, at least heard some stories about shared living.

Part one serves as an overview of the phenomenon.

Chapter one presents basic data of share housing market, revealing the scale and the trend, which is followed by highlighting the initiatives of choosing this type of living.

Chapter two is dedicated to the mostly reported problems in shared living. Besides the problems themselves, we are also interested in whether the problem has any geographical and social particularity or they are omnipresent.

1.

If housing expenditure equals or exceeds 30% of a household’s income, it is considered as “housing-cost burden”, referring to Schwartz, M., & Wilson, E. (2008). Who Can Afford To Live in a Home?: A look at data from the 2006 American Community Survey. US Census Bureau.

2.

Pluhar, A. (2011).

Sharing housing: A guidebook for finding and keeping good housemates (Kindle Ed.). Peterborough, New Hampshire: Bauhan Publishing.

12 Better Shared House

13

Chapter 1 As a Fact 1.1 Clarification of the theme First of all, referring to the statement made in the book Under One Roof, we consider that sharing must be an intentional and purposeful commitment by participating households.3 Therefore, prisons, military barracks and hospital wards cannot be counted as share housing.

Then, share housing could be further classified by defining several parameters within it, including what is type of dwelling, shared facility, ends of sharing, legal statue, and so on. Variations could be numerous. The main categories are shown in Table 1, providing us a good framework to clarify the one we concern.

3.

Hemmens, G. C., Charles, H. J., & Carp, J. (Eds.). (1996). Under one roof: Issues and innovations in shared housing. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Table 1: Kinds of Share housing by Sponsorship and Type of Sharing. Marris, P. (1996).

The Trouble with Sharing. In G. C. Hemmens, H. J. Charles, & J. Carp (Eds.), Under one roof: Issues and innovations in shared housing. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Regarding shared facility, we only study the situation that essential living facility is shared, mainly kitchen and sanitary stuffs. In other words, people hardly share out everything with others since their individual living unit are not self-contained.

For tenure, we only concern rental which is coherent with sharing of essential living facility. The situation that one owns an asset which is not self-contained but still has to share with others in cooking and self cleaning is at least rare if there is any.

Social sharing may exists or not, depending on personal interest. Hence, we do not exclude any of them while believe there could be more types.

For the sources of payment, we do not consider any special program targeting needy tenant, supported by nonprofit organization or government agencies. Only shared houses in speculative market will be studied.

Last but not least, only those assets transformed from family dwellings will be studied. A large portion, if not dominant, of available stocks derive from family house, thanks to its large number and small scale, ensuring easy access and manipulation. Some of them may be renovated, some may not. Under the notion of sustainability, we decided to focus on this kind of shared house other than the newly built ones. Besides, to understand how the houses originally designed for family can afford the needs of flatmates is appealing to us.

1.2 Emerging Market and Future Trend Before shedding a light on how people co-live in shared house — the main concern of this discourse, we need to give a general overview of share housing market, mainly because of two reasons.

First of all, we need to confirm that it has already been a living solution that involves considerable number of people, meaning that it is worthy to be researched for the well being of such a big population.

14 Better Shared House

15

Secondly, in considering the changing pattern in the past years, we are able to have an idea of the trend in the future.

If shared house is predicted to be prosperous, it enhances the significance of our work.

Therefore, we collect the data of share housing market in London, New York, Sydney, and Tokyo, through which we see a globally emerging, urban based, and strongly increasing market. Choosing of these four cities are based on large scale, cultural and geographical diversity and mostly important, those metropolitan areas have the biggest share housing market according to their influence and attractiveness.

London

UK has the highest rent in Western Europe for flatsharers, thus considered as the least affordable country, according to flatshare website Easyroommate4.

As the capital of the City City Average Rents (£ pcm) priciest country, 520 London London, however, 428 Paris plays the role as the 419 Milan most expensive city, 385 Nice followed by Paris and 385 Rome Milan, with average 375 Glasgow monthly rent of £520, 342 Marseille 21% higher than Paris 326 Lyon (Table 2). One other 325 Birmingham report from 321 Lille Easyroommate shows that the monthly rent in March 2012 has increased to £550.5 According to the current supply and demand condition in local market, this number could reach £572 per month.6 The high rent then pushes more and more people choose share housing.

In London, where the flatshare population is currently 653,000 Easyroommate forecast a further rise of at least 22,000 new flatsharers in 2012.7

The boom in the popularity of flatsharing is the second inevitable step following the mortgage market breakdown.

Renters can no longer secure mortgages to become homeowners. This is pushing mainstream rents through the roof, and these buyers are turning to flatshares to trim the monthly cost of renting.9

Due to a general growing rent, demand for shared houses exceeds the number of supply. Thus we can predict the trend will keep going in a near future.

New York 4.

Easyroommate is a website founded in 1999

by Yannick Pons, which provides a platform of share housing. Now it is operating in 31 countries and 12 languages.

Table 2: Most Expensive Cities For Renting In Western Europe. UK renters face highest costs in western Europe.

(2011). EasyRoommate Press.

Retrived from: http://www. w3corporate.com/press_archive.php.

5.

The Number of Professionals Searching for Flatshares Increases to 66%. (2012). Ibid.

Retrived from: http:// www.w3corporate.com/ press_archive.php.

6.

Flatshare Market to Hit 2.96m in 2012. (2012).

Ibid. Retrived from: http://www.w3corporate. com/press_archive.php.

7.

8.

8

According to Jonathan Moore , the trend seems inevitable:

9.

Flatshare market to hit 2.96m in 2012. (2012) . Easyroommate Press.

Retrived from http:// www.w3corporate.com/ press_archive.php

Fangyuan Chen is a college student of New York University, now live in Downtown Manhattan with five other girls in a shared house.

You know, if not live far away from here, people usually do not search a house from Internet. You just go to the street, ads are everywhere. You see street ad, call the landlord, look around the 10.

Based on a telephone interview with Fangyuan Chen.

flat, and make decision. That’s it.10

A growing trend of share housing market can be clearly seen in New York city. From 2005 to 2011, the percentage of housemate or roommate in the total households number was increased 1.32%, from 1.52% to 2.84%, indicating an added 108345 people in total (Table 3).

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

In households

7,956,113

8,035,586

8,100,090

8,179,990

8,214,372

8,019,368

8,071,057

In family households

6,457,537

6,527,703

6,581,059

6,637,085

6,621,886

6,484,634

6,496,977

Non-relative

168,085

182,334

188,598

184,767

182,669

205,170

198,423

Roomer or boarder

--

--

--

26,757

28,151

23,947

--

Housemate or roommate

23,257

35,003

47,170

42,766

41,799

47,327

44,820

In nonfamily households

1,498,576

1,507,883

1,519,031

1,542,905

1,592,486

1,534,734

1,574,080

Non-relative

242,412

310,694

321,160

327,837

356,492

347,983

365,722

Roomer or boarder

--

--

--

39,804

53,929

48,002

--

Housemate or roommate

98,106

153,405

173,119

162,663

176,957

172,373

184,888

Total Housemate or roommate

121,363

188,408

220,289

205,429

218,756

219,700

229,708

Percentage in total households

1.52%

2.34%

2.71%

2.51%

2.66%

2.73%

2.84%

Ibid.

Director of Easyroommate.co.uk.

Table 3: Total population of housemate or roommate live in households of New York city, New York. U.S. Census Bureau. (2005-2011) American Community Survey, 2005-2011. Table C09016 (2005, 2006, 2007, 2011), B09019 (2008, 2009, 2010). Relationship by Household Type (Including Living Alone). Generated by Zui TAO. Using American FactFinder. Retrived April 23, 2013, from http://factfinder2.census.gov

16 Better Shared House

Sydney

17

Home ownership is valued in Australia as Australian Dream or Great Australian Dream, embodied as a detached house with a land plot11. However, almost one-third of the total households in Australia are share housing12 — in 1986.

In New South Wales, besides other public or community housing types, like university colleges, community housing or homestays, most share housing is in the private rental market.13 Its capital city, Sydney, with its over 4.6 million citizens, has a largest market of share housing, as well as a biggest undersupply of affordable housing compare to the other cities of Australia.14

11.

Australian Dream. (n.d.). In Wikipedia.

Retrieved June 11, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Australian_ Dream#cite_note-2

12.

Edwards, P., Jones, J., & Edwards, J. (1986).

The social demography of shared housing. Journal of the Australian Population Association, 3(2), 130–143.

13.

Redfern Legal Centre., & University of Sydney.

(2005). The share housing survival guide. (2nd ed.)

Chippendale, N.S.W: Redfern Legal Centre Pub. 14.

Figure 4. Flatshare Index. Retrived from http://au.easyroommate. com/RC/flatshare-index/ flatshare-index-map

As London and New York, share housing market here is growing. Based on the ABS Census in 2012, 15% growing rate ranks group households the most increased household type.15

Hurley, B. (2012).

Share houses prove their worth. The Australian Financial Review. Retrieved April 15, 2012, from http://www.afr.com/p/ personal_finance/ smart_money/share_ houses_prove_their_ worth_eTkOju9N6HdHnYl36LwMxM

15.

Ibid.

Figure 5. More and more people choose share housing in Sydney. Photo: Scott Morton.

Wade, M. (2012). Crowded houses: changing face of the Australian dream. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved April 15, 2013, from http://www.smh. com.au/nsw/crowded-houseschanging-face-of-the-australiandream-20121019-27wzj.html

Tokyo

Tokyo, world’s biggest metropolitan area, has enjoyed also the world’s most expensive city for fourteen years out of the last two decades.16 In Tokyo, the number of available stocks run by agencies could be 10 times more than that coming from individual owners.17 The agency-based pattern distinguishes Tokyo’s share housing market from the other three cities.

Share housing in Japan was started as Gesuto hausu (Guesthouse) for foreigners in the 1990s, with very little local people live in. And the term was invented very direct — Gaijin hausu (Foreigner’s House). Since one Japanese guarantor is required for renting normal apartment but foreigners are almost impossible to have one, this housing type emerged. The first group of Japanese living in shared house was those who wish to practice English with foreigners. Interestingly, noticing that more and more Japanese moving in, “live with Japanese” and “learn Japanese” are used by several agencies to attract foreign tenants today.

16.

J.S. (2013). The cost of living index: Tokyo drift. The Economist.

Retrieved June 12, 2013, from http://www. economist.com/blogs/ gulliver/2013/02/cost-living-index

17.

Kitagawa D. (n.d.). プ

ライバシーを守りつつ楽しむ 現代型シェア住居. Business Summit Online. Retrieved from http://www. business-summit.jp/article_detail.php?id=104&total_record=2&total_ pg=2[00]&page=1

Figure 6. Different advertisements on English homepage and Japanese homepage.

Retrived from http://www. borderless-house.com/.

18 Better Shared House

19

Saving money

Figure 7. Changing of property and beds. Statistic concludes Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba. Hitsuji

Number of beds

Number of property

Thanks to the deliberate work of agencies, the share housing market in Tokyo grows in a J curve (Figure 4).

Inkyubēshon Sukuea. (2008).

Guesthouse report 2008. Re-

Beds in domitory Beds in single room Beds in total Number of property

After having an idea of how prosperous the share housing market is, one may ask that why such many people choose to live with others and how do they take benefit from that.

Next part is supposed to give an answer on both.

trived from www.hituji-report. jp/report/2008/upward-trend/ recent-trend.html

Serving as the very first and most important reason, more affordable rent of shared house provides a relatively easier access, making itself highly competitive. In UK, for instance, the average rent of a one-bedroom property is £989, 269% more than that of flat-sharing rent in 2012.18 Referring to student, in western countries, living in private leased house is often cheaper than the accommodation provided by university, as shown in Table 4.

The gap is not only made by university accommodation costs including utility and service fees, but also, maybe more determinant, by how many flatmates one can have, the more of them, the cheaper the rent. More often than not, students living in private leased house share with more people than those living in the standardized double or single room in university dorms.

Russell Group University 2011

University Accommodation costs (39 weeks)

Private Rental costs (39 weeks)

Saving over course of Year

University of Sheffield

3,884

2,904

981

University of Birmingham

3,584

2,722

863

1.3 Reasons of Sharing

University of Leeds

3,605

2,779

826

University of Bristol

3,686

2,942

743

Share housing may be easily considered as merely a reluctant answer to high cost of living in those big cities. In fact, people get involved in living with others under various reasons. Based on data and interview coming from annual report issued by real estate agency, guide book written by specialist, booklet made by university, we present the most common five benefits associated with share housing, shown below:

London School of Economics & Political Science

5,267

4,626

641

University of Warwick

3,367

2,752

615

University of Manchester

3,190

2,773

417

King’s College London

5,013

4,626

387

University of Southampton

3,404

3,097

307

Imperial College London

4,915

4,626

289

University of Nottingham

3,464

3,215

249

University of Liverpool

3,167

2,952

215

University College London

4,726

4,626

100

Newcastle University

3,054

2,977

77

University of Oxford

3,593

3,607

-14

University of Cambridge

2,996

3,942

-946

Russell Group Average

3,807

3,448

359

• • • • •

Saving money Earning money An easier beginning for first-timer Flexibility, and Social connection

It is these reasons that appeal to people and make shared living so popular.

However, in China, four-person room is the standard accommodation offered by university. Sometimes students

18.

The number of professionals searching for flatshares increases to 66%. (2012). W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate. com/press_archive.php

Table 4: Annual costs over 39 weeks: University accommodation vs. private flatshare.

Students to pay £48,500 for three years’ study. (2011). W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate. com/press_archive.php

20 Better Shared House

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may be unluckily alloted eight to ten-person room as we were. The cost of them, no matter four or ten, is indeed small, significantly lower than average market price.

An easier beginning for first-timer

According to an independent research conducted by independent research organization OnePoll on more than 1,000 18-24 year old people, the costs of starting a job is 31% more than their first pay cheque. A total first month spend is £1,339, out of an net average monthly starting salary at £1,033.

For those who have just left family house, like university students, or those who have just arrived a new city, like young workers, share housing could be a good choice for such a transitional and probably difficult period.

Earning money

According to the latest ABS report on the living situations of young Australians, shared accommodation was the most common living arrangement among those who moved out of home before the age of 18, with 37% of men and 33% of women moving into a group house when they first left.19

In Tokyo, as mentioned before, a guarantor-based renting system ruthlessly excludes many of the first-timers there, especially foreigners. What’s more, some other additional move-in costs continuously heighten the barrier (Table 5).

19.

Tips for high school grads.(2011) W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate. com/press_archive.php

Table 5: About Our Guest Houses (n.d.). Share Style.

Retrieved from http://www. share-style.net/share.html

For house owners, share housing becomes a new way of earning money. As we analyzed in the first chapter, in cities like London and Sydney, demand of shared house exceeds supply. This profitable gap attracts many house owners turn their property or part of the property into shared use, while some others buy a new property and rent it as shared house. Since one property can host more tenants, the profit can exceed conventional houses-for-rent for individuals.

Reported by Easyroommate.uk, a house owner could earn £6,500 extra per year on a room-by-room basis.20 Also because of the supply-demand pattern, a rising rent could be, although a bad news for renter, a catalyst of leasing the property:

One Room Apartment

Guest House

Deposit

90,000 Yen

30,000 Yen

Key Money

66,000 Yen

0 Yen

Since January 2012 the number of bedrooms available for

Agent Fee

63,000 Yen

0 Yen

flatsharers to rent has fallen by over two fifths (44%). Over the

Insurance

20,000 Yen

0 Yen

same period demand has remained steady and this has put even

Key Exchange

20,000 Yen

0 Yen

more strain on an already stretched supply of rooms. This supply

Rent

60,000 Yen

60,000 Yen

and demand imbalance has caused rents to rise 3.6% (£415 to

Administration

5,000 Yen

0 Yen

£430 per month) since January 2012.21

Utilities

0 Yen

12,000 Yen

Furnishings

No

0 Yen

Total Cost

324,000 Yen

102,000 Yen

A visible reciprocity can be found in this housing type, that demand and supply mutually get their benefit in a certain level. But there is more above economic consideration.

“Hassle Free Move-in”, indicating prepared utilities, is the term used to attract flatmates: One Room Apartment

Guest House

Electricity

Not Provided

Provided

Gas

Not Provided

Provided

Water

Not Provided

Provided

Internet

Not Provided

Provided

Flexibility Table 6: Ibid.

“Plug and play” is a term used in computer science, which means “one with a specification that facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system without the need for physical device configuration or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts”.22 Now it is used to describe a flexible lifestyle, that you just “plug” into a new city, while everything is prepared: furniture, Internet, cooking facilities, etc. — and you start to play.

Deposit (1 month’s rent)

£365

Average Flatshare Rent

£365

Cost of setting up home

£450

Additional travelling costs

£75

Clothes spend

£84

Total first month spend

£1,339

Table 7: Breakdown of additional expenses of starting a career. New job costs more than first month’s salary in start up costs (2011). W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate.com/ press_archive.php

20.

Renting by the room could earn cash-strapped homeowners £6,500 extra per year - and help them avoid having to sell.

(2009). Easyroommate Press Release. Retrieved from http://uk.easyroommate.com/misc/ press.aspx

21.

Flatshare rents to rise 4.3% in 2013. (2012) Easyroommate Press Release.

Retrieved from http:// uk.easyroommate.com/ misc/press.aspx

22.

Plug and play. (n.d.).

In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Plug_and_play

22 Better Shared House

23

Such flexible lifestyle is underpinned by the changing social conception of relationship, globalization, information availability and so on. The following description perfectly portrays this emerging social group.

Economic and social changes are creating a new class of professionals who are marrying later and seeking a trouble-free place to stay that is close to the city. They have no children, no mortgage, sometimes no cars and therefore higher discretionary incomes. They have high standards, rent long term and are willing to pay handsomely for a good room.23

For them, shared house could be a nice option — enjoy a new place with a minimum cost on housing.

Social connection

Last but not least, share housing offers a ground for sociability.

One advantage of living with people with multiple culture backgrounds, as mentioned before, is learning language. A survey conducted by au.easyroommate.com reveals that:

23.

Hurley, B. (2012).

Share houses prove their worth. The Australian Financial Review. Retrieved April 15, 2012, from http://www.afr.com/p/ personal_finance/ smart_money/share_ houses_prove_their_ worth_eTkOju9N6HdHnYl36LwMxM

• Nearly three-quarters of people (72%) who have lived with flatmates from foreign countries have a much better understanding of different cultures and languages, and 43% of people have shared accommodation with .others for this very reason.

• Around half (46%) of respondents have been taught another language by flatmates.

• 7% of respondents have been taught a foreign language by a flatmate to fluent or conversational standards.

• Over half of people (54%) believe knowing a foreign language makes them more likely to impress a new partner.

• The main reason why people want to learn a second language is to make travel easier (35%). Other drivers include increasing business and professional opportunities (11%) and to help with study such as university (8.1%).

• 65% would you like to be taught another language and learn about another culture from a flatmate.24

24.

Tenant’s extra: renters tap skills in the household.(2011) W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate. com/press_archive.php

In Tokyo, festival ceremony, weekend party, language lesson, thematic seminar and abundant other activities are organized by agency. People living in different properties may be gathered sometimes by these events. In order to further enhance the enriched cultural experience of shared living, properties may be categorized in different themes which are embodied as special facilities planted and related cultural events. House for cooking lover (with a big kitchen) and home for pets (with a bathroom for pets) are popular among potential flatmates.

Figure 8. Upper left and right images are pet-bathtub and workshop room for artist respectively; Lower image shows the professional kitchen of a shared house targeting restaurant entrepreneur.

Masahiro Uchino. (2012) シ ェアハウス市場の今とこれ から (Today and future of

Sharehouse Market). Retrived from http://www.slideshare. net/masahirouchino/

24 Better Shared House

25 responsibility taking in case of any damage on shared property may lead to friction if agreement is not achieved.

The story from my friend could be a good illustration.

She used to share an apartment with other four students, ten-minute by walking to Leonardo campus. As the only new comer, she got very confused at the beginning about the time-honored friction among those old housemates.

Till the community had collapsed, and half of the housemates had left, she got to know that everything stems from the usage of water heater. Two housemates who are in a tighter living budget asked the whole community to use water heater after six o’clock in the afternoon since the cost of electricity during daytime is higher than that during night time. Under this limitation, the very old water heater cannot even enable all members to have one shower per day. It made the others who are able to afford a free using complain, paving the way to breaking up.

According to a survey in Australia, households bills proved to be the second biggest source of conflict as 66 percent respondents chose it.2

Chapter 2 Widely Reported Problems On one hand, living in shared house brings considerable benefits to the residents, on the other hand, one can hardly ignore its high problematic pattern which has already won widely awareness. It is a hot topic of chats among friends, an attractive substance of TV series, movies and literatures, symptoms that guides attempt to cure.

In studying the issue, we collect information mainly from share living guidance, report and poll conducted by real estate agency, and news published. They have geographical pluralism and cover many most important metropolitan areas, which ensure a relatively overall view.

At the beginning, we would like to show all of the most reported problems below and remind readers once again the fact that they have geographical and cultural resistance.

• • • • • •

“Bill war” Facility jam How clean is clean?

“Borrowing” Noise “Guest from hell”

2.2 Facility jam

2.1 “Bill war” Rent paying is usually handled carefully, however, if anything happens, it could be very serious. Bills was discussed in Pluhar’s guidebook1 as one of the common areas arising conflict. She mainly addressed the payments other than rent like Internet, gas, water, electricity, and amendment in case. Changes on cost due to outside circumstances, the way of paying, delay of payment,

1.

Pluhar, A. (2011). Sharing housing: A guidebook for finding and keeping good housemates (Kindle Ed.). Peterborough, New Hampshire: Bauhan Publishing.

Housemates in good relationship may have meal all together once per week, while mostly they prepare and eat separately. Some may never eat together purposely.

However, people tend to have meals at similar time. So, in shared house, kitchen jam is a well acknowledged phenomenon. Limited space and utensils are always complaint by residents.

In Tokyo, kitchen won the second place on the list of inconvenient facility.3 Flatmates’ complaints concentrated on crowded situations, especially during morning and evening. The limitation of space and facilities like refrigerator and heater are both mentioned. Cleaning is also a problem since someone do not clean after using. It will be further addressed later.

Bathroom proves to be another battle field. Data

2.

House share a hit with mates (2010) The Morning Bulletin. Retrieved from http://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/ house-share-a-hit-withmates/654392/ Survey finds division of chores biggest deal breaker in share houses (2010) The Telegraphy. Retrieved from http://www. dailytelegraph.com.au/ survey-finds-division-ofchores-biggest-dealbreaker-in-share-houses/story-e6freuyi-1225925475213 Lazy grubs, live-in lovers rile roomies (2010) The Age. Retrieved from http://theage.domain. com.au/home-rentingtips/lazy-grubs-liveinlovers-rile-roomies20100924-15q40.html Data used in the articles is from a survey of 700 residents was conducted around September 2010

by Easyroommate.com.

3.

不便に感じる生活設備

(Inconvenient Facilities).

Hitsuji Inkyubēshon Sukuea.

(2008). Guesthouse report

2008. Retrieved from http://www.hituji-report. jp/report/2008/daily-life/inconvenient-facility.html

26 Better Shared House

27

published in an article called Partita la corsa alla stanza in affitto per migliaia di studenti italiani4 shows that 35.5 percent chose bathroom waiting as the most annoying issue in shared house. Flatmates in Japan entitled bathroom the most inconvenient area.5 Detailed Commends from respondents include few women-only shower, limited space, not enough facility, too short ten-minute lighting.

When I did my internship in Japan, one colleague living in shared house around Shibuya, Tokyo, talked about bathroom affairs every morning, like one day someone occupied it for thirty minutes, resulting in his late arrival, and another day he was awaken by flatmate’s five o’clock shower.

Besides, washing machine and dryer was reported the third big trouble.6 Concerns were mainly on dissatisfaction on coin laundry, paid service, and facility shortage.

In conclusion, although there are many problems associated with living facilities, shortage turned out to be the most common and influential one, referring not only the facilities mentioned before, but also toilet, shared TV, and general storage.7

4.

The survey of 1,490 clients of Easystanza.it was conducted in March 2011 by the website.

Easystanza.it is the main flatshare and houseshare website in Italy with over 35,000 room and flatshare ads, opening in 2004.

Retrieved from http:// www.w3corporate.com/ press_archive.php 5.

不便に感じる生活設備

(Inconvenient Facilities).

(2008). Hitsuji Inkyubēshon Sukuea. (2008). Guesthouse report 2008. Retrieved from http://www.hituji-report.jp/report/2008/ daily-life/inconvenient-facility.html 6.

7.

Ibid.

シェア住居生活をしていて

嫌だなと感じる時 (Unhappy Experience of Shared Living).

(2008). Ibid.

Figure 9. Inconvenient facility.

Hitsuji Inkyubēshon Sukuea.

(2008). Guesthouse report

2008. Retrived from www.

hituji-report.jp/report/2008/ daily-life/inconvenient-facility. html

other

parking

bicycle parking

mail box

hall

bedroom

washing machine/ dryer

washstand

toilet

bathroom

kitchen

common PC

common TV

community room

number

2.3 How clean is clean?

Disturbance mainly happens in kitchen, common area and shared bathroom, if any. Each housemate could have one’s own standard of tidiness and cleanliness, therefore even if the distribution of domestic chores is well done and followed, dissatisfaction may persist, let alone someone fails to maintain the well condition or forget to do the tasks.

A survey done in Italy shows that, in response to what annoys you the most in shared living, 46.8 percent ranked disorder.8 In Australia, similarly, messy homes is a common problem, in which cleaning responsibilities was the top source of conflict (76 percent).9 As shown in Guesthouse Report 2008, uncleanness and untidiness were heavily criticized, dominantly on common space. Respondents attributed the phenomenon to different reasons, like large number of people, higher criteria of female other than male, loose personality, and absence or ignorance of third party. ““ Sometimes toilet is dirty, I do not want to clean for others. ““ Kitchen is dirty. Someone do not like to put things in order. ““ Not clean. There are some people with bad manner. ““ Dirty. The administrators said they would come but actually

not.10

Kitchen is the place shared the most and degrades the fastest. All housemates have to eat and many of them cook at home. Utensils, tableware, and space for food storage are shared somehow, which brings an avoidable collective mission of maintenance. Unwashed dishes, refrigerator with terrible smell and date-expired food, messy counter space and cupboard are the most common ones among numerous the others. The process of achieving a general agreement on such many trifles, one can imagine, could be demanding in terms of time and energy. Once housemates neglect it or interpret in different ways, tension may arise.

8.

Partita la corsa alla stanza in affitto per migliaia di studenti italiani.

(2011) W3 Ltd Press Release.

Retrieved from http:// www.w3corporate.com/ press_archive.php

9.

House share a hit with mates (2010) The Morning Bulletin.

Survey finds division of chores biggest deal breaker in share houses (2010) The Telegraphy.

Lazy grubs, live-in lovers rile roomies (2010) The Age. Data used in the articles is from a survey of 700 residents was conducted around September 2010

by Easyroommate.com.

10.

シェア住居生活をしていて

嫌だなと感じる時 (Unhappy Experience of Shared Living).

Hitsuji Inkyubēshon Sukuea.

(2008). Guesthouse report

2008. Retrieved from http://

www.hituji-report.jp/ report/2008/daily-life/episode-of-unpleasant.html

28 Better Shared House

29

2.4 “Borrowing” People get to live together with very different amount of belongings. Anything happening in one’s own room seems to be one’s own business while it stretches out into common areas, things change. For example, personal stuffs occur improperly could be a source of complaint.

Borrowing in kitchen is another common affair where dissatisfaction arises. Last but not least, in case of living with the householder who probably has a home with countless personal stuffs, housemates have to pay extra attention on their behavior although painfully. Pluhar noticed householders to foresee a certain amount of wear and tear on one hand, and on the other hand suggested housemates to respect the householders’ requirements on how their possessions get used.11 The survey of flatmates in Australia revealed 78.1 percent felt annoyed when a flatmate took food without asking, in which almost 50 percent said they had items of food mysteriously disappear only once a month, but for an unfortunate 3.5 percent, it happened on daily basis.12 In Italy, 46.4 percent respondents chose borrowing without asking as the most irritating thing, 35 percent said using others’ food.13

performance. It does not mean that shared houses in other cities escape from this problem. 46.1 percent of 1,490 respondents reported their trouble on noise according to EasyStanza.it.15

2.6 “Guest from hell”

11.

Pluhar, A. (2011).

Sharing housing: A guidebook for finding and keeping good housemates (Kindle Ed.). Peterborough, New Hampshire: Bauhan Publishing.

12.

House share a hit with mates (2010) The Morning Bulletin. Data used in the articles is from a survey of 700 residents was conducted around September 2010 by EasyRoommate. com.

13.

2.5 Noise Noise worried flatmates heavily in quite different ways.14 Late night noise in communal space affected others’ rest.

The bad acoustic performance of partition walls cannot even prevent one’s phoning voice from being heard by his or her neighbor, considering as a serious challenge of privacy. Other cases could be that one awakes because of the ringing of neighbor’s alarm clock.

Housemates in Tokyo may experience the most serious condition since partition wall of residential buildings in Japan is famous for its small width and bad acoustic

Partita la corsa alla stanza in affitto per migliaia di studenti italiani.

(2011) W3 Ltd Press Release.

Retrieved from http:// www.w3corporate.com/ press_archive.php 14.

シェア住居生活をしていて

嫌だなと感じる時 (Unhappy Experience of Shared Living).

Hitsuji Inkyubēshon Sukuea.

(2008). Guesthouse report

2008. Retrieved from http://

www.hituji-report.jp/ report/2008/daily-life/episode-of-unpleasant.html

There is a common saying: “Fish and guests have one thing in common. They both stink on the third day.” Probably it can give you a hint of the difficulty in managing guest affairs which potentially extend to all the other problematic areas.

Bill issue will be addressed if the guest, maybe the significant other of one housemate, spend a lot of time at the house, using water, gas, heat, electricity, and other utilities paid by all housemates. A newly come person with different habitat may not be consistent with the existing routine adopted by the housemates. It ought to be settle down by communication, if not, conflict may occur.16 Lazy grubs, live-in lovers rile roomies (2010) reported that house guests troubled 57 percent. Too-frequent sleepovers with partners irritated 49 percent of respondents, which showed that most felt it was OK for a flatmate’s partner to stay overnight once or twice per week but 81 percent said beyond that, more cash should be put in the communal biscuit tin.17

15.

Partita la corsa alla stanza in affitto per migliaia di studenti italiani.

(2011) W3 Ltd Press Release.

Retrieved from http:// www.w3corporate.com/ press_archive.php

16.

Pluhar, A. (2011).

Sharing housing: A guidebook for finding and keeping good housemates (Kindle Ed.). Peterborough, New Hampshire: Bauhan Publishing.

17.

Lazy grubs, live-in lovers rile roomies (2010) The Age. Survey finds division of chores biggest deal breaker in share houses (2010) The Telegraphy.

Data in the article is based on the survey of 700 residents was conducted around September 2010 by the Easyroommate.com.

11 30 Better Shared House

31 What kind of shared tenancy arrangement am I in?

Chapter 3 Relationship Management

Is there a written tenancy agreement with the landlord that has your name on it?

yes

3.1 Self management

Sharing housing is a negotiated agreement between adults about

HEAD-TENANT if your housemate(s) are not part of your agreement with the landlord.

no 1.

Pluhar, A. (2011). Sharing housing: A guidebook for finding and keeping good housemates (Kindle Ed.). Peterborough, New Hampshire: Bauhan Publishing.

Do you pay your rent to a housemate who has a written or oral tenancy agreement with the landlord? (they would be your HEAD-TENANT)

no

yes

Has the landlord given your head tenant written permission for you to live there?

yes

no

You are a: SUB-TENANT

Your status is unclear. Contact Tenants’ Advice Service for advice.

Covering the whole process of shared living, topics are usually arranged in a chronological sequence. One example is presented below.

• • • • • Communication oriented

Looking for a place; Moving in & money stuff; The legal situation; Living in a share house; Moving out (or being kicked out).2

Focusing on everyday life, some commentators try to equip people with better skills on interaction with their flatmates. One can quickly find numerous resources on the Internet and paper-based literature.

Part 1: The legal s tuat on

In some countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, where shared housing is covered by tenancy law, individual and public institution write and issue comprehensive literatures, in believing they can give tenants an idea of how legal system can assist them and accordingly what they should and should not do.

We got to know that the universities and independent organizations in Australia have already had fruitful achievements. For instance, crowded house, a joint project of the Tenants’ Union ACT and Welfare Rights and Legal Centre, with funding from the ACT Government through the Department of Justice and Community Safety, published a booklet in 2007 based on the law applying in the Australian Capital Territory in July the same year. Other resources are Housing Guide (2013) from Victoria University, and Share Housing Survival Guide (3rd edition, 2012), a joint project between the University of Sydney Student’s Representative Council and Redfern Legal Centre.

They are common in addressing different issue based on the law statues of residents, highlighting rights and responsibilities associated. Hence, illustration on legal status serves as a lesson at the very beginning or at least prior to discussion on detailed shared living.

OR

yes

Do you have an oral agreement with the landlord that you can live there?

Annamarie Pluhar pointed out in her guidebook of shared housing that:

Law oriented

You are a: CO-TENANT if your housemate(s) are part of the same agreement with the landlord;

no

how they will live under the same roof.1

Figure 16. What kind of shared tenancy arrangement am I in? Helen, S. (2007).

Crowded House: A legal guide to share housing. Tenants’Union ACT Inc. Retrieved from http://www.tenantsact.org.au/ publications/Share-Housing

(START HERE)

2.

Redfern Legal Centre., & University of Sydney.

(2005). The share housing survival guide. (2nd ed.)

Chippendale, N.S.W: Redfern Legal Centre Pub.

32 Better Shared House

33

Well communicated and therefore matched personalities and habits of flatmates have profound influence on their future living, which can be started from self-clarification.

One can categorize one’s expectations in can’t live with or without3. Topics include gender, age, sexual orientation, and cultural preferences, pets, cleanliness, neatness, television, radio or music, alcohol consumption and drug use, cigarettes, diet, meals, sociability, and routines. Then, a meeting for information exchange can be arranged in case of screening new-comer and being screened in the future.4 It is also considered by Easyroommate very important for first-time flatsharers.

3.2 Institutional basis 3.

Pluhar, A. (2011). Sharing housing: A guidebook for finding and keeping good housemates (Kindle Ed.). Peterborough, New Hampshire: Bauhan Publishing.

Japanese real estate agency 6/12/13

4.

Stephens, L. (1997) House mates: A guide to cooperative shared housing.

Portland, OR: Verbatim Publishing.

Be prepared for your first meeting. Once you’ve found a flatshare we recommend viewing the room and meeting the existing flatmates/ landlord first. First impressions matter, so come to the meeting looking presentable and be prepared with

–Select

references – remember it’s a mutually beneficial decision, so make sure you come with a list of your own questions.

5

Others practical issues at the beginning, like writing a good ad, contact, interviews, checking references, introducing pets, children meeting are carefully analyzed.

As share living starts, communication and self-discipline turn out to be the most emphasized tips of coping with others, appearing in almost all the guidebooks and articles.

Verbal and non-verbal skills like message board, house meetings, suggestion box, healthy house presuppositions, conflict resolution, and tips for fighting fair.6 Pluhar highlights the importance of first week of moving in. Three samples of household dos and don’ts with different tones from relaxed talk to stiff statement can help housemates establish a sophisticated agreement on daily issues which were further discussed in highlighting the manners of good housemate.7 “I” statements and paraphrasing are referred as two key techniques that works well in dealing with friction.

The later means that one person repeats in his own words what the other has said as a sort of reconfirming which make people feel heard, ensure accurate communication, and calm down both parties.8

In Japan, real estate agencies who hold the dominant number of available stocks, first of all, are more capable of doing experiments than individual property owner in terms of fiwww.borderless-house.com/sf/web/index-en.php/customer/registForm/house_id/30/room_disp_id/1D @ nancial and human resources.

Secondly, being in a network (for confirmation) * where numerous data and experience are accessible even Occupation * –Select by public, agencies are able to learn through a very large commuting pool, place accelerating the pace of improvement. knowledge Last but not least, all agencies bear the idea of promoting Working company or school exchange name * and social culture connections in believing it out can"unemployed" *If you are not working, please fill make shared houses more appealing.

Referral Code Thus, the market evolves very quickly, descending many innovative strategies, in which we would like to mention Why did you choose BORDERLESS HOUSE? * you have lived Borderless House before, please write down the name of a house. systematic screening, house*Ifmanager, physical environIf you belong to below affiliated organizations, please choose. ment and community cultivation.

Affiliated organization

5.

Tips for high school grads. (2011) Retrived from http://www.w3corporate.com/_docs/pressrelease/Easyroommate/ ERMAUS_Tipsforhighschoolgrads_14.11.pdf

6.

Stephens, L. (1997) House mates: A guide to cooperative shared housing.

Portland, OR: Verbatim Publishing.

Screening

8.

Ibid.

Procedures from

(3)Family Emergency Contact Person / Cosigner *If you are Japanese, you have to get a cosigner.

Contact person’s name (Parent) * Relationship

7.

Pluhar, A. (2011).

Sharing housing: A Guidebook for finding and keeping good housemates (Kindle.). Peterborough, New Hampshire: Bauhan Publishing.

9.

file types: JPG,GIF,PNG or PDF (Max 2MB)inquiring to moving in.

Well organized and highlyAcceptable standardized screening process (n.d.) Borderless House.

Choose File No file chosen Upload is adopted by almost all agencies. We take Tokyo and Retrived from http:// Seoul based real estate agency Borderless Houseform as an Based on your application and ID, we will carrywww.borderless-house. out internal screening process. com/en/contrac/ Please attach your valid identification in the one of lists below. example. First step is confirming vacant room status and Copy of Identification Passport Driver’stour license requesting a room viewing1. which is aorguide of the Figure 10. One part of however, you have to 2. I.D from your country (In the case you do not have a passport yet; send us the copy of your passport date) application form for targeting property. Then a reservation form should be before moving in the 3. Certificate of Alien Registration Card (If you currently stay in Japan and have one) reservation. (n,d,) Borderless filled, one part of which is for filling emergency contact, House. Retrived from http:// www.borderless-house.com/sf/ shown in Figure 10. In case of emergency, like accident, web/index-en.php/customer/ serious illness, and missing or in case of overdue payment, registForm/house_id/30/ Language for contract 9 Japanese English room_disp_id/1D paper the agency can inform one’s family.

Address phone No

*

* *

(4)Any question or request After the submission, the agency will carry out their internal screening process being reserved from public. Within three business days, applicator can get to know the result.

Any question or request

send

34 Better Shared House The atmosphere of the guest house is variously that depends on

In normal shared house, tenants manage their collective living by themselves. Nonetheless, in Japanese guesthouse, house managers, living inside the property or conducting periodical visit, are available for consultation regarding any problems that one cannot talk with other residents, as well as intervening in case of necessary. More detailed tasks vary according to each agency. One example from Sakura House is shown below.

house owner, manager, and company. So, talking to the manager or caretaker of the house could help you to let you know not only the house’s atmosphere [. . .]13

13.

Figure 11. Profile of house managers. (n.d.) Sakura House. It is part of the general information shown on the web page of each property.

From E-guest house, a portal site of guest house declaring itself as the biggest one in Japan, we found detailed description of how do house managers play their three roles.

Mediator intervention Awareness of conflict on going No special strategy Other

• As a community builder: Equally important, house managers contribute to community formation and maintenance.

Figure 13. Strategy for community formation. Ibid.

Retrived from http://www. hituji-report.jp/report/2008/ operation/activities-for-community-formation.html

• As an introducer of shared houses: Before deciding the guest house, you had better to go to watch

number

the house and talk with a manager. Basically, the rules of each

It is the very important thing to know how often of their visiting high, it means that when there are some trouble occur in the

House managers also have profound influence on the living environment of shared house and could be very decisive in attracting new housemate.

12.

Ibid. Retrived from http://e-guest.jp/en/ pages/point

er th O

ty an d ev en rin t na g m ne e, w oc h o cu u pa se nc ma y a te nd ’s i so nfo Pe rio on : di ca lh Co ou nt se ac tn m ee ot tin eb g oo k an d m es sa ge Bo bo x ar fo d rc ol lec re ting qu m es e t t ssa o ge m an and ag er

ine

be

em

of

pa r

Re m

Ibid. Retrived from http://e-guest.jp/en/ pages/qa#qa6

of the guest house. If the frequency of visiting guest house is house they could help you to solve that problem faster.12

Ro ut n

11.

at io

not solved between you and the person who are in concerned.11

an iz

Talk with manager or guesthouse company if the trouble could

rg

• As a mediator (Figure 12):

10.

What is the guest house? (n.d.) E-guest house. Retrived from http://e-guest.jp/en/ pages/life

vis it

house is posted on the wall that would lets you know not only about the characteristic of the house and also the manager.10

Ibid.

Figure 12. Philosophy for trouble handling. Hitsuji Inkyubēshon Sukuea. (2008).

Guesthouse report 2008.

Retrived from http://www. hituji-report.jp/report/2008/ operation/philosophy-for-trouble-handling.html

O

House manager

35

Tokyo attracts people from all around the world while those who cannot speak Japanese and are not familiar with the local culture may feel difficulties. In respect of this, most of the house managers are able to speak English, thanks to their previous living experience abroad. They act as a bridge linking the foreigners and Japanese residents in helping each party cope with the other more smoothly.

36 Better Shared House Through its 25 years development, Japanese shared house had some profound changes, from Gaijin house (foreiner’s house) at the very beginning, appealing to foreigners for its relatively low rent and simple procedure, to today’s plurality in terms of characteristic of community and the concept behind. Towards a certain concept applied, relevant facilities are intended to appear as an additional value, seeking to attract people in same interest or meeting the demands of special social groups.

mainly two levels, living together like friends and everybody acquainted.

Figure 15. Motivation for community formation of residents. Ibid. Retrived from http://www.hituji-report. jp/report/2008/operation/ motivation-for-community-formation.html

Figure 14. Points of physical environment development.

Hitsuji Inkyubēshon Sukuea.

(2008). Guesthouse report 2008.

Retrived from http://www. hituji-report.jp/report/2008/ operating-body/points-of-development.html Other

Recreation

more toilet and bathroom

more furnishings in bedroom

Spacious bedroom

Spacious community room and kitchen

Exterior design

number

interior design

Towards community

37

As we described before, house manager was introduced to be a in-site promoter along with periodical arranged social events. For physical environment, Japanese agencies consistently focus on interior design and common space.

They are considered as the benchmarks of shared houses and are extremely important in supporting community life.

These spaces enable residents to get to know each other and live comfortably together. A lounge is also important for houses with small rooms, so that residents can relax in a wider space. If there is no lounge in which people can exchange, communicate, and get to know each other, the appeal of a share house would be drastically lowered.14

As a result, community-oriented mode is considerably accepted by housemates. Guesthouse Report 2008 revealed that half of the housemates wanted to be part of a community where they tend to commit themselves in

14.

This is part of our interview with Keiko Sasaki who is the contact person of Oak House. The interview was done via email in April 2013.

Friend relationship Acquaintance relationship Community without dispute acquaintance relationship Mediator available in case Self-arrangement Other

3.3 Conclusion In share living, people handle problems in different ways, some smart, some naive. In this sense, guidances are introduced. Inside, troubles of everyday life are carefully mapped and categorized. Accordingly, solutions targeting either one category or a specific problem can be found.

A common property of all suggestions is their attempt of adjusting human relationship no matter on law or moral basis.

On one hand, it is almost impossible to find out two shared houses bothered by exactly the same problems since compositions of flatmates, or we say relationships, vary.

Problems of interrelationship are always in a chronological spectrum, so there is no way to isolate any single problem from the other. What’s more, due to the very fluctuating nature of human, situations change quickly. In conclusion, understanding tips is easy, but practicing them proves to be demanding and sometimes still leads to failure.

On the other hand, some types of problem do prevail, crossing country, age, profession, gender and so on. It hints us to question whether there exists something behind such fragmented narratives and deeply influence the formation of those culture-free problems.

38 Better Shared House

39 Student Housing Services. (2013). Housing guide: Student housing service. Retrieved from Victoria University, Campuses & services Web site: http://www.vu.edu.au/campuses-services/student-support/housing-finance

References

Students to pay £48,500 for three years’ study. (2011). W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate.com/press_archive.php

Edwards, P., Jones, J., & Edwards, J. (1986). The social demography of shared housing.

Journal of the Australian Population Association, 3(2), 130–143.

Survey finds division of chores biggest deal breaker in share houses (2010). The Telegraphy. Retrieved from http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/survey-finds-division-ofchores-biggest-dealbreaker-in-share-houses/story-e6freuyi-1225925475213

Flatshare market to hit 2.96m in 2012. (2012) . Easyroommate Press. Retrived from http://www.w3corporate.com/press_archive.php Flatshare rents to rise 4.3% in 2013. (2012). Easyroommate Press Release. Retrieved from http://uk.easyroommate.com/misc/press.aspx

Tenant’s extra: renters tap skills in the household.(2011). W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate.com/press_archive.php

Helen, S. (2007). Crowded house: A legal guide to share housing. Tenants’Union ACT Inc. Retrieved from http://www.tenantsact.org.au/publications/Share-Housing

The Number of Professionals Searching for Flatshares Increases to 66%. (2012). W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrived from: http://www.w3corporate.com/press_archive.php.

Hemmens, G. C., Charles, H. J., & Carp, J. (Eds.). (1996). Under one roof: Issues and innovations in shared housing. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Tips for high school grads. (2011) W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrived from http://www. w3corporate.com/_docs/pressrelease/Easyroommate/ERMAUS_Tipsforhighschoolgrads_14.11.pdf

Hitsuji Inkyubēshon Sukuea. (2008). Guesthouse report 2008. Retrieved from http:// www.hituji-report.jp/index.html

UK renters face highest costs in western Europe. (2011). EasyRoommate Press. Retrived from: http://www.w3corporate.com/press_archive.php.

Hitsuji Inkyubēshon Sukuea. (2010). Tōkyō shiea seikatsu. Tōkyō: Asupekuto.

House share a hit with mates (2010). The Morning Bulletin. Retrieved from http://www. themorningbulletin.com.au/news/house-share-a-hit-with-mates/654392/ Hurley, B. (2012). Share houses prove their worth. The Australian Financial Review. Retrieved April 15, 2012, from http://www.afr.com/p/personal_finance/smart_money/share_houses_prove_their_worth_eTkOju9N6HdHnYl36LwMxM

Websites

http://www.sakura-house.com/en/ http://www.borderless-house.com/ http://www.oakhouse.jp/eng/

The cost of living index: Tokyo drift. (2013). The Economist. Retrieved June 12, 2013, from http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/02/cost-living-index

http://e-guest.jp/en/

Kitagawa D. (n.d.). プライバシーを守りつつ楽しむ現代型シェア住居. Business Summit Online.

Retrieved from http://www.business-summit.jp/article_detail.php?id=104&total_record=2&total_pg=2[00]&page=1

http://www.tokyoroomfinder.com/

Lazy grubs, live-in lovers rile roomies (2010). The Age. Retrieved from http://theage. domain.com.au/home-renting-tips/lazy-grubs-livein-lovers-rile-roomies20100924-15q40.html

http://gaijinhousejapan.com/ http://www.hituji.jp/ http://uk.easyroommate.com/ http://www.easystanza.it/ http://www.kijiji.it/

New job costs more than first month’s salary in start up costs (2011). W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate.com/press_archive.php

http://www.w3corporate.com/press_archive.php.

New South Wales Government. (2010). Residential tenancies act 2010 (No. 42). Retrieved from NSW Legislation Web site: http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/ view/inforce/act+42+2010+cd+0+N

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Dream#cite_note-2

Partita la corsa alla stanza in affitto per migliaia di studenti italiani. (2011). W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate.com/press_archive.php Pluhar, A. (2011). Sharing housing: A guidebook for finding and keeping good housemates (Kindle Ed.). Peterborough, New Hampshire: Bauhan Publishing.

http://factfinder2.census.gov http://www.afr.com/p/personal_finance/smart_money/share_houses_prove_their_ worth_eTkOju9N6HdHnYl36LwMxM http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/crowded-houses-changing-face-of-the-australiandream-20121019-27wzj.html http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/02/cost-living-index

The number of professionals searching for flatshares increases to 66%. (2012). W3 Ltd Press Release. Retrieved from http://www.w3corporate.com/press_archive.php

http://www.business-summit.jp/article_detail.php?id=104&total_record=2&total_pg=2[00]&page=1

Redfern Legal Centre., & University of Sydney. (2005). The share housing survival guide.

(2nd ed.)Chippendale, N.S.W: Redfern Legal Centre Pub.

http://www.hituji-report.jp/report/2008/upward-trend/recent-trend.html

Renting by the room could earn cash-strapped homeowners £6,500 extra per year - and help them avoid having to sell. (2009). Easyroommate Press Release. Retrieved from http://uk.easyroommate.com/misc/press.aspx

http://uk.easyroommate.com/misc/press.aspx

http://www.share-style.net/share.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_and_play

Schwartz, M., & Wilson, E. (2008). Who can afford to live in a home?: A look at data from the 2006 American Community Survey. US Census Bureau.

http://www.slideshare.net/masahirouchino/

Scottish Executive. (2004). Houses in multiple occupation: A guide for tenants. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Retrieved from http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/07/19733/40896

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/survey-finds-division-of-chores-biggest-dealbreaker-in-share-houses/story-e6freuyi-1225925475213

Stephens, L. (1997). House mates: A guide to cooperative shared housing. Portland, OR: Verbatim Publishing.

http://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/house-share-a-hit-with-mates/654392/

http://theage.domain.com.au/home-renting-tips/lazy-grubs-livein-lovers-rile-roomies-20100924-15q40.html

41

part II ‘Family’ of Unrelated People

Intimate relationship tends to push the involvers to find an exclusive place for protecting itself, as short as a one-night hotel room or as long as an old family house. In the whole spectrum, nuclear family proves to be the most stable type and therefore is still the main targeting group of real estate market. Due to the long-time accumulation and on-going mass production, dwellings design for nuclear family are the most common residential entity. Thanks to social and economical changes, considerable number of them are used by other social groups, single, single parent, and unrelated flatmates, or changing households, aged parent with children living away. It wins a lot of attentions and debates from interior designer, architect, urban planner, geographer, sociologist, and policy maker. Dysfunction of family dwelling in affording newly emerged social group like single parent, and changing households, are heavily addressed.1 Similarly, facing the popularity of share living and problems associated, we feel obliged to understand how the built environment shaped for family, at least intimacy, are able to afford or undermine the pseudo family of unrelated flatmates. Part II is dedicated wholly to give an answer which is further expected to get the principle of intervention, if necessary, from the discipline of architecture.

We don’t match ...

The building doesn’t match !

1.

Part of the articles and books are presented below:

Davis, S. (1977). Interiors-Accommodating diversity. In S. Davis (Ed.), The form of housing.

New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Franck, K. A. (1991). New households, new housing.

Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Anthony, K. H. (1991).

Housing the single-parent family. In W. F. E. Preiser, J. C. Vischer, & E. T. White (Eds.), Design intervention: Toward a more human architecture.

New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

42 Better Shared House

43

Chapter 4 Home, Sweet Home The chapter is composed by three sections: the first one represents the social structure of family house, revealing how it protects basic human needs of intimacy and privacy; afterwards, we zoom in on the fluctuation of intimate relationship performing in domestic environment; Grounded on the previous sections, three space identities are introduced in section three. We term them as my place, our place 1 and our place 2. Through them, the dynamic of domestic life is further addressed.

4.1 Space of intimacy and Privacy Relationship as premise

Figure 17. “The home as a transactional unity”. Stills from Revolutionary Road (2008).

People conditionally share with others, especially physical object and space. For using others’ personal belongings or area, one normally need to win an admission ticket, namely establishing a relationship.2 It is one’s friend who can come and eat together at one’s home but hardly unacquainted people. The visit of an old friend may generate less pressure upon host than that of a newly made friend.

In modern society, people’s relationship inside a family house, normally an intimate relationship, is specific that it is established before entering a physical boundary, which means each person within this relationship choose in advance who he or she is going to live with. It is defined by Giddens as pure relationship: “the involvement of individuals in determine the conditions of their association”3. It is distinguished from many other physical environment with their hosting community, for instance school, office, and of course, shared house. In these environments people normally know each other after being involved in the same space.

2.

We are not going to discuss those illegal or dehumanized situations like burglar and normalized penetration in a dictatorial basis.

3.

Giddens, A. (1992). The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies (Kindle Ed.). Cambridge: Polity.

44 Better Shared House

Three aspects of relationship

In modern society, three aspects of a established relationship were described by Peter Marris: • Defined expectations • Mutual agreement, and • Effective sanctions4 Without so, relationship has to be continually renegotiated and discussed: This becomes enormously time-consuming, because if nothing

4.

Marris, P. (1996). The trouble with sharing. In G. C. Hemmens, C. J. Hoch, & J. Carp (Eds.).

Under one roof: Issues and innovations in shared housing.

Albany: State University of New York Press.

can be taken for granted, every encounter, in a sense, has to be redefined and renegotiated.5

Routinization

5.

Ibid.

Further, in considering the contrast between courtship and marriage, Marris illustrated the significant difference before and after a settled relationship, which is the process he called routinization: Courtship can be an enormously time-consuming relationship.

Neither one knows quite what to expect of the other. They are

Figure 18. Intimacy is a Routinization routinized relationship.

interested, but they are afraid of making commitments that may lead them to be hurt afterwards. They do not know what the behavior of the other person means, so they themselves are alternately welcoming and defensive toward the relationship. […] Then there is a point at which the relationship comes to be defined. Either it is “on” or it is “off”. Once it is “on” and it is defined as being “on”, then expectations begin to be formed which enable the relationship to become somewhat routinized.6

Normally, a routinized relationship, specifically an intimate one, serves as a premise of living together in which people need and intend to commit themselves to collective engagements like doing chores, helping each other, talking, having meals, kids rearing or sometimes merely co-presenting. In this way, people can be fulfilled in a life where security, happiness, comfort and tranquility can be found.

Retreat to Intimacy

Social obligation in public domain is embodied as various human front7 or persona8. Maintaining these masks proves to be energy, time and money absorbing. Therefore,

6.

Ibid.

7.

Goffman, E. (1980).

Behavior in public places : Notes on the social organization of gatherings. Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press.

8.

Jung, C. (1963). Memories, dreams, reflections. New York: Pantheon Books.

Figure 19. Steen, Jan Havicksz. (1660-1679). Kinderen leren een poes dansen, bekend als ‘De dansles’. Amsterdam; Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

46 Better Shared House

47

intimacy serves as an emotional shelter where people can take off the persona, change into causal clothes, therefore be in Relaxation. The process is elaborated by Barrington Moore Jr. in his research on privacy: In very many societies there exist small intimate groups to which the individual may retreat from time to time for protection and relief from the demands and obligations of the larger society.

Within such groups there is no need to maintain the kind of self-control, deportment, and costume required “in public” by the larger society, though other demands are likely. The emotional atmosphere is warm and supportive, encouraging trust and a relaxation of one’s guard.9

For its own sake, intimacy hardly involve many people, therefore selections are necessary, being grounded on two bases : One is ascription, referring to nuclear family, age set, boys’ clique or girls’ clique, etc., associated with kinship, age and sex; and the other is free individual choice, for example clubs and networks of intimate friendship.10 In those intimate groups, “there is little or nothing that the individual can do to obtain membership”11.

Family House

Not only we want to escape from public and be immersed in the warmth of intimacy, we also have to protect and prolong it. Naturally, people resort to physical barriers.

They could be newly built one, a tree house, or an existing one, a natural cave, by which they feel easy to control the border and thresholds, thus physically exclude the others.

Family house proves to be the most lasting physical expression.

9.

Moore, B. (1984).

Privacy: Studies in social and cultural history. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc.

10.

Ibid.

11.

Ibid.

Figure 20. Family house as an embodiment of intimacy.

The social boundary has to have some physical expression to be meaningful. Hence arises the significance of technological factors that permit some degree of residential segregation, especially from the prying eyes — not to mention the noisy cries — of

Routinization

wandering children, to judge from the anthropological evidence.

First comes the separate house with sturdy walls and real doors [. . .]12

Mbuti Pygmies live in the form of nomad bands in the Ituri

12.

Ibid.

rain forest in Africa. The band contains maximum thirty nuclear families, within which several smaller segments would be formed depending on the interrelationship in-between families for easier subdivision of hunting areas, at minimum three families.13 Each nuclear family builds their own shelter, by women, in the form shown on Figure 21: saplings as structure and heart-shaped mongongo leaves as coverage. The entrance is left open, and one can monitor its direction according to the relationship with neighbors.14 In this way, the position of each shelter constantly changes in a more or less fixed frequency, normally one time per month in the same campsite.

There is not any individual or collective authority within Mbuti society15, the harmony of which largely relies on self-adjustment of spatial arrangement: 1) small segments are formed according to the willingness of each family group, and 2) By manipulating the directions of entrance, each family could block outsiders’ sight as the only mechanism of privacy protection.

In this case, family is the smallest social unit, accordingly, family dwelling is constructed only for sheltering family

13.

Ibid.

14.

Schoenauer, N. (2000). 6,000 years of housing. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Figure 21. Mbuti Pygmies and their shelters in Ituri forest, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). Photograph by Eliot Elisofon, 1972.

Image no. EEPA EECL 8057.

Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives. National Museum of African Art. Smithsonian Institution.

15.

Ibid.

48 Better Shared House

49 have an indeed big spectrum, ranging from daily trivia, like don’t chat when you eat, to life-time success, winning Nobel Prize for instance. In response, children may resort to different strategies, as sly as white lie, or as passive as overall obedience. Except those heartfelt commitments, the pain felt by most of us probably comes from another mask described by Moore: The individual who seeks an opportunity to drop the public mask, find sympathy, warmth, and emotional support in a small walled-off group, is liable to find another mask necessary.17

Figure 22. BaMbuti apa.

Schoenauer, N. (2000). 6,000 Years of Housing (p. 19).

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

life, without any further spatial subdivision inside. (Figure 22) Its simplicity perfectly illustrates the coherence of intimate relationship, social boundary, with its niche, physical expression. Moreover, Mbuti pygmies direct the entrance of their dwelling, as an substitution of not fully realized exclusivity.

Retreat from intimacy to privacy

The willingness to be totally relieved from social obligations from any social group represents one’s need of privacy, however, the need of privacy is not necessarily limited to that. In Alan Westin’s discussion of privacy, one can find it highly relates with communication, control, and identity other than emotional release18 , in our words, relieving from social obligation.

17.

Ibid.

18.

Gifford, R. (2007).

Environmental psychology principles and practice (4th ed.). Optimal Books.

Figure 23. In bedroom.

Photograph by Gianni Berengo Gardin.

However, according to Moore, escape into intimacy is “never a complete escape from social demand”.

The structural forms of legitimate and intimate escape from external social pressures also serve at times to transmit these pressures. [. . .] Different intimate groups, depending on their location and function in the society as a whole, serve to transmit and sustain different aspects of a society’s culture. All of them develop some standards of behavior.16

It is hard to say that I never feel the pressure from family.

For example, Chinese parents are renowned for putting tons of expectation on the shoulder of children. Some of them may date from the stereotypes praised by the whole society, while some may be exactly the goals that had been achieved by the parents but failed. In terms of content, they

16.

Moore, B. (1984).

Privacy: Studies in social and cultural history. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc.

Further, Moore argued that the overly demanding, oppressiveness, or boredom associated with the presence of others may urge an individual to seek for isolation.19 In discussion of anatomy of privacy, referring to domestic domains, Christopher Alexander argued it has to encourage concentration, contemplation, and self-reliance

19.

Moore, B. (1984).

Privacy: Studies in social and cultural history. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc.

50 Better Shared House through the respect of differences lying in age, sex, and interest. For achieving so, bedroom, a room of one’s own, has to function as a realm of solitude, for rest, sleep, and love.20 Private room

Nowadays, more often than not, solid wall is resorted to protect one’s privacy. The area enclosed may vary, as big as royal palace or as small as single room, while its boundary, the walls, functions similarly, offering resistance to visual, acoustic, olfactory offenses, and the locomotion of offenders themselves. In answering where can you get your privacy, private room may be the fastest thing emerging in one’s mind. It is so common that people may forget how long it took to evolve and how people can survive without so.

In some nonliterate societies, people hardly find any enclosed space alloted to an individual. Urged by the willingness of being alone, at least temporarily, people try to find substitutions of privacy, or seeking it in the wild.

Children of Mbuti bands sometimes escape from their family shelter to any other families in order to find comfort from the other adults, so called multiple escape hatches or multiple care takers.21 In Eskimo community, the father of the family Briggs lodged sometimes oriented himself against the wall but not any other family member, a gesture implying he does not want to talk.22 In Fulani society, for men, feeding cattle to salt licks far away from villages is a common way of escaping from others.

In 14th century England, invention of chimney is considered as the starting point of spatial separation between householders and their servants. Chimney effectively evacuated smokes in the upper part of the hall — the only room in the house, thus, by adding more floors, additional living space was created, permitting family life to be enjoyed exclusively by family members.23 Soon, people furthered their ideas, namely not only living apart from one’s inferiors, but also being apart from one’s equals occasionally. It finally led to the invention of private room.24 We only discuss private room in terms of its social

51 functions, in other words, as a place one can share out with others, hence the room for hiding the activities that should be done alone, like toilet for defecation and urination, is beyond our attention.

Obviously, people do not just use private rooms alone, on the contrary, sometimes certain levels of sociability may take place here. In China and Japan, since living together with parents, probably aged from six to eighteen years old, when one invite one’s friend to play at home, he or she may directly lead the friend to his or her bedroom. Parents may intervene legally only in case of delivering snacks and beverages. In this case, private room creates a solid boundary, in which privacy could be achieved by escaping in, therefore avoiding the intrusion from others, or host friends. The later proves to be quite important, for it enables children to conduct selective control of access to the self,25 in other words, the sense of autonomy.

20.

Chermayeff, S., & Alexander, C. (1965).

Community and privacy: Toward a new architecture of humanism. Doubleday.

Moore, B. (1984).

Privacy: Studies in social and cultural history. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc. 22.

Briggs, J. L. (1970).

Never in anger: Portrait of an Eskimo family. Cambridge, Mass.

Bryson, B. (2010).

At home: A short history of private life (Kindle.). New York: Doubleday.

24.

Ibid.

Gifford, R. (2007).

Environmental psychology principles and practice (4th ed.). Optimal Books.

Figure 24. Maruko, left one, is with Tama at her bedroom.

Maruko is not permitted to enter her own bedroom at the moment because her sister is hosting her friend there. Yes, Maruko and her sister share one bedroom.

21.

23.

25.

Chibi Maruko-chan (ちびま る子ちゃん) is a shōjo manga

series by Momoko Sakura, later adapted into an anime TV series by Nippon Animation, which originally aired on Fuji Television from January 7, 1990 to September 27, 1992.

Social Structure of family house

Now, it is possible to summarize the social structure of family house as the embodiment of human needs in both intimacy and privacy, as visualized in Figure 25. We can see three relationships and three spaces separated by two boundaries.

53

Retreat from intimacy to privacy

4.2 Life at Home Retreat from public to intimacy

PRIVACY

INTIMACY

After establishing intimate relationship and building up the physical boundary, a home environment is newly formed. The dynamic domestic life starts.

Home, in many cultures, depicts as “harbor”, where people can go out and return, and recreate for next adventure. Dovey concluded three pairs of spatial dialectics which distinguish home from the world out of it (Figure 26).

Home, according to Altman, is a transactional process, in which physical environment, time and people continuously interact and cooperate with each other, linked by three conceptions: affordance, relationship, and appropriation, shown on the inner circle of the diagram below.

PUBLIC

Retreat from intimacy to public

Three relationships: • Public is characterized by a large number of people, in which most of them are unacquainted with each other; • Intimacy describes a social group with more than one person and limited number of people, much less than the amount in public. The relationship is due to ascription or individual choice, and roots on 1)Defined expectations; 2) Mutual agreement and 3)Effective sanctions.

• Privacy refers to the overall control of one’s solitude against any unwilling stimulus from the others.

In comprehension of social structure of family house, a more detailed inquiry on domestic life, focusing on interactions among family members at home, is the main body of next section.

Not home

Inside

Outside

Order

Chaos

Home

Journey

Figure 26. Dovey, K. (1985).

Home and homelessness. In I. Altman & C. M. . Werner (Eds.), Home environment (pp.

33–64). New York: Plenum Press.

Figure 25. Social structure of family house.

Three spaces: • Public space is the area equally accessed by public, ending at the wall of family house; • Common space is shared among family members, in Privacy Intimacy room; between the wall of family house and private • Private room is under the overall control of its owner, an individual in principle, inside the wall of private room.

Home

Figure 27. The home as a transactional unity. Werner, C. M., Altman, I., & Diana, O. (1985). Temporal Aspect of Homes: A Transactional Perspective. In I. Altman & C. M. . Werner (Eds.), Home Environment (pp. 1–32). New York: Plenum Press.

Affordance

Affordance was coined by James Gibbson in his classic The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, arguing that human perception on objects and environments is based on their meaning, action, and behavior, rather than the physical characteristics associated.26 For example, the need

26.

Gibson, J. J. (1986).

The ecological approach to visual perception. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

54 Better Shared House

55

of sitting could be afforded by either a chair or a rock or numerous other objects with flat surface and proper height.

Those objects, in this sense, all have the affordance of sitting.

This is the “pure” interaction between human and physical environment, in which we do not consider the other resistance from either the other physical force or mental stimulation of the beholder his, or herself.

Social rules and relationships

We have already discussed the formation of any given relationship by adopting the concept routinization. It is a time-consuming process in which people commit themselves under given notions, or reshaped ones, therefore it bridges people and time.

Appropriation, attachment and identity

Appropriation, generally speaking, means that the person is transformed in the process of appropriating the environment, in Heidegger’s words, taking aspects of our world into our being and being taken by our world.27 Through the process, we change our environment and in turn we are changed by the experience of doing so.28 Two main activities are involved: 1)A “caring” for a place, meaning people take care and maintain the environment; 2) A “taking” of that place into our being, meaning, people identify with it. The later one may be better comprehended by highlighting the difference in between ‘identity of ’ and ‘identity with’. ‘Identity of ’ means that a persistent sameness and unity of something allow people to distinguish it from others, whereas ‘identity with’ indicates the identity connotes the willingness belongs to a person or group of being part of the place.29 Further, Relph asserted the former as the constituent components of the identity of places, the second the forms and levels of outsideness and insideness.

Home is one of the places that most of us experience ‘existential insideness’ — the most fundamental form in the whole spectrum of insideness. This kind of place is characterized in its richness of significance and being experienced without deliberate and selfconscious reflection.30 Home makes most of us rootedness which is, as Simone

27.

Dovey, K. (1985).

Home and homelessness.

In I. Altman & C. M. .

Werner (Eds.), Home environment (pp. 33–64). New York: Plenum Press.

28.

Ibid.

29.

Relph, E. (1976).Place and placelessness. London: Pion Limited.

30.

Ibid.

weil aruged, the most important and least recognised need of the human soul.31 Home provides the ground where human identity as individual and as member of a community can rest. On one hand, such an irreplaceable centre of significance tends to be intangible, on the other hand, it may lie in the trivia of everyday life.32 As Cooper-Marcus described, human need of a home is a striving toward a state of wholeness.33 Being at home, people tend to be quite relaxed and effortless, moreover, they can successfully do so. As we discussed before, one may still remember how intimate relationship underpins the state of relaxation or we say unconsciousness. As Relph described, people are usually quite familiar with the environment, its setting and its people, and in turn they are known and accepted.34 It is the familiarity that enables people to act without thinking too much if there is any, moreover, this kind of “carelessness” hardly brings about negative impact on neither one’s companions or the physical setting. In purpose of grasping the mechanism behind so, we resort to cognitive science and psychology.

31.

Weil, S. (2002). The need for roots: Prelude to a declaration of duties towards mankind. Retrived from http://ishare.iask.sina. com.cn/f/23166410.html

32.

Relph, E. (1976).Place and placelessness. London: Pion Limited.

33.

Cooper-Marcus, C. (2006). House as a mirror of self: Exploring the deeper meaning of home (Kindle ed.). Lake Worth: Nicolas-Hays, Inc.

34.

Ibid.

Figure 28. Carl Jung’s house built by himself at Bollingen, Lake Zurich, Switzerland. He use such a way to practice a fully appropriation. Photo: Andrew Taylor.

56 Better Shared House

System 1 and System 2

57 impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings, in turn, once being endorsed, they turn into beliefs; • When System 1 faces difficulty, it asks System 2 to help;

Adopted from other psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky use System 1 and System 2 to reveal the mechanism behind decision making process. System 1 enables people to make decision or take action “without thinking”, thanks to its maintenance and updating of the personal world.

Repeated experience Clear display

Similarly, Jean Piaget adopts assimilation and accommodation to explain human actions, in revealing the dynamics of interaction between people and their surroundings.

Feels familiar

“... All needs tend first of all to incorporate things and people

Feels true

world into the mental structures that have already been

into the subject’s own activity, i.e. to ‘assimilate’ the external

EASY Primed idea

Feels good

Good mood

Feels effortless

constructed; and secondly to readjust these structures as a function of subtle transformations, i.e. to ‘accommodate’ them to external objects.” (as cited in Relph, 1976).38

The model is constructed by associations that links ideas of circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that co-occur with some regularity, either at the same time or within a relatively short interval. As these links are formed and strengthened, the pattern of associated ideas comes to represent the structure of events in your life, and it determines your interpretation of the present as well as your expectations of the future.35

It functions automatically, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control, therefore is the fast way of thinking. In facing more complicated or unfamiliar circumstances, we tend to be thoughtful and cautious.

System 2 starts to run, which involves more effort while runs significantly slower than System 1.36

35.

Kahneman, D. (2011).

Thinking, fast and slow (Kindle Ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

36.

Ibid.

The automatic operations of System 1 generate surprisingly construct thoughts in an orderly series of steps.

The interaction of the two systems can be concluded into three points, shown below: • System 1 runs automatically and never stop while System 2 normally remains in a comfortable low-effort mode; • System 1 continue to give System 2 suggestions, like

Relph, E. (1976).Place and placelessness. London: Pion Limited.

39.

Kahneman, D. (2011).

Thinking, fast and slow (Kindle Ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

When you are in a state of cognitive ease, you are probably in a

complex patterns of ideas, but only the slower System2 can 37

The distribution of labor between those two is highly efficient, namely a neatly calculated and optimized “cost and efficient”. System 2 is characterized by its laziness, often feeling reluctant to invest more than what is strictly needed.39 People may be governed by their System 1 only, in countless daily activities, like hanging out in the neighborhood, breath, eating with close friends, watching soap opera and so on. However, there still exists vital tasks that only System 2 can handle. This kind of activities usually impose high demands to System 2, requiring the exertion of self-control, therefore connotes an unpleasant statue. People hardly smile when they are in contemplation.

Mental effort plays an important role here. It serves as the measurement of defining cognitive ease and cognitive strain.

38.

good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust you 37.

Ibid.

intuitions, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar. [. . .] When you feel strained, you are more likely to be vigilant and suspicious, invest more effort in what you are doing, feel less comfortable, and make fewer errors, but you also are less intuitive and less creative than usual.40

Being relaxed at home, people are exactly in the state of cognitive ease with their System 2 running in a very low

40.

Ibid.

58 Better Shared House

59 A couple once constituted has its own exclusive history, its own

effort mode. In contrary, in giving a speech to public, in either drawing the attention or avoiding mistakes, people may experience cognitive strain.

biography. It is a unit based upon emotional communication or intimacy. [. . .] Communication is the means of establishing the tie in the first place and it is the chief rationale for its continuation.42

Giddens termed the relationship based upon emotional communication ‘pure relationship’. It is implicitly democratic. A good relationship has to be similarly treated and practiced as public democracy.

42.

Giddens, A. (1999) ‘Family’, Reith Lectures, 4, BBC Radio 4, 28 April.

Intimacy implies a wholesale democratising of the interpersonal domain, in a manner fully compatible with democracy in the

Figure 29. left: man using system 1; right: man using system 2

Transformation of intimacy

In mediaeval Europe, agricultural production involving the whole family group, family functioned as an economic unit.

Marriage was mainly based on property transmission, other than sexual love which we are familiar today. Women were considered as the property of their husbands or fathers. So as children. They were hardly reared in their own sake, meaning that parents concerned more the contribution their children made to the collective economic goal than themselves.41 It was prevailing in premodern periods, but not necessarily limited to that. In today’s China, a considerable portion of parents still bears the very notion, although risks the disappointment due to the noncooperation of children.

Once the family ceased to be an economic entity, the idea of romantic love started to become the basis of marriage, freeing each party from the economic contract.

Starting from here, transformations never stop. The traditional family model developed in 1950’s is continuously undermined by new lifestyles, like living alone and cohabitation. Moreover, even for those who are still called father ,mother, husband or wife, life inside changes.

Today the couple, married or unmarried, is at the core of what the family is. The couple came to be at the centre of family life as

public sphere.43

With the absence of an arbitrary power from a third party, like a chief or a common will from larger society, the ability of handling such intimacy in a cooperative way is necessary.

Trust and open dialogue are core strategies suggested by Giddens.44

43.

Giddens, A. (1992).

The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, love and Eroticism in modern societies (Kindle Ed.). Cambridge: Polity.

44.

Giddens, A. (1999) ‘Family’, Reith Lectures, 4, BBC Radio 4, 28 April.

41.

Giddens, A. (1999) ‘Family’, Reith Lectures, 4, BBC Radio 4, 28 April.

Codependence

Conclusion

Cooperation

Based on Piaget’s conception, Relph asserts that the unconsciousness of balancing assimilation and accommodation, for the existential insider, is due to the gradual and subtle development of an identity with and of his place that begins in childhood and continues throughout life.

However, for empathetic insider,45 the process ought to be self conscious, indicating an authentic attitude to place.

the economic role of the family dwindled and love, or love plus

An authentic attitude to place is thus understood to be a direct

sexual attraction, became the basis of forming marriage ties.

and genuine experience of the entire complex of the identity of

Figure 30. Transformation of intimacy.

45.

Giddens, A. (1992).

The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, love and Eroticism in modern societies (Kindle Ed.). Cambridge: Polity.

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places—not mediated and distorted through a series of quite

family house, physically speaking. Rather than “the place of my parent and me” or “my family’s place”, children usually say to the others “my place”, regardless of the actual property owner. It represents one’s consent given to the collective identity of that community which is in turn embedded into the individual profile.

Due to the fact of being shared by all members, we name common space “Our Place” where two space identities, Our Place 1 and Our Place 2, may appear in the same place but at different time, depending on the amount of mental effort of any given participant. Our Place 1 and Our Place 2 refer to the dominance of System 1 and System 2 respectively, what serves as the reason of name borrowing.

arbitrary social and intellectual fashions about how that experience should be, nor following stereotyped conventions. It comes from a full awareness of places for what they are as products of man’s intentions and the meaningful settings for human activities, or from a profound and unselfconscious identity with place.46

Therefore, we can review the transformation of intimacy in the light of the cooperative pattern of System 1, assimilating the external world, and System 2, accommodating structured self to external objects. Due to the individually based way of coping with others, involvers tend to take the role of empathetic insider of home environment more and more, meaning that one acts consciously based on his direct, genuine and full awareness of the current environment while unconsciously under the influence of his past experience as well.

In conclusion, home environment makes us rootedness and serves as the land where individual identity grows, therefore has its irreplaceable significance although may not be recognized. As a harbor where security and warmth can be found, home environment relaxes family members by suspending their System 2, therefore people are able to act in an effortless way. The transformation of intimate relationship brings about more tasks for System 2, deriving a more cooperative relationship in which genuine attitude towards the environment is needed.

4.3 Three Space Identities My Place

My Place, with no doubt, firstly refers to one’s private room. It is the place an individual can fully control, being autonomous and thus feel easy to appropriate. Without it, hardship of acclaiming self-identity may occur. Children, after reaching a certain age, often have strong willingness to obtain one’s own room, dreaming to tell friends: “Hey, this time, come to my place!”

Then, My Place may connote one’s home, or we say

46.

Relph, E. (1976).Place and Placelessness. London: Pion Limited.

Our Place 1

Our Place 2

Our place 1 describes the moment that common space is shared by the residents in an effortless way, with little stress felt by any of them.

Physical environment is appropriated collectively where mutual expectation and trust have to be in. Harmony could be a general term to describe the process. Everything is just proper, for which little deliberate attention is necessary to be paid. It would be good that it could last as long as possible. Is it possible? The answer is almost no.

Fluctuation never cease no matter in newly formed couple or decades’ marriage. Our Place 2 hereby may take place.

Our Place 2 refers to the moments that residents act with their attention, aiming at re-establishing the harmony, in other words, our Place 1, through democratic dialogs.

Each individual is expected to act in a autonomous and cooperative pattern.

Doing so brings about cognitive strain, therefore not pleasant. Due to the laziness of System 2, people may resort to existing stereotypes, under which one can follow the rules acknowledged by larger society, more important, investing very little mental effort; or adopt a laissez-faire mode, in which the chance of harmony is given to luck. It may lead to a Our place 1 with quite nice quality but in a flash.

Figure 31. My Place.

Figure 32. Our Place 1.

Figure 33. Our Place 2.

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4.4 Conclusion

Nowadays, people are accustomed to face any kind of conflict or disagreement and try to solve it within the intimate group. For example, today, if children feel invaded by their parents, which in reality very often happens, they hardly run to the neighbor for help like children do in Mbuti bands, but to confront with their parents. Or in some easier moments, like family members arrange a meeting on deciding what should be plant in backyard, mothers routinely ask the others “what do you want to eat for dinner?”

The notion of democracy and individualization ought to make the appearance of Our Place 2 more in terms of frequency, the level of necessity, while with less effort.

Further, we have to clarify two different patterns in real family life: constructive one, and destructive one.

In this essay, we only discuss the constructive one, which means everyone intend to cooperate but not defect. Based on common sense, if a family is formed, if there is no external force, people inside would not intentionally break apart with each other in a certain period. It is a cooperative unity. And ideally speaking, such cooperation is sustainable, in which people will maintain the warmth of family in a consistent level in a democratic way.

Family house has three space identities: My Place, Our Place 1 and Our Place 2.

The identity My Place normally associates with an exclusive privilege of using and controlling the real space, meaning we can escape from all the other members, decide who can be in and when, and further appropriate the space by taking care as it is and taking the space into our being.

Our Place 1 and Our Place 2 portray the dynamics of domestic life in which people normally feel relaxed in coping with the others, enjoying the state of cognitive easy while sometimes need to invest their effort in democratic dialogs to rebuild the former state. We borrow Giddens’ trust and accountability to make the conclusion.

Trust without accountability is likely to become one-sided, that is, to slide into dependence; accountability without trust is impossible because it would mean the continual scrutiny of the motives and actions of the other.47

Figure 34. Constructive and destructive pattern.

47.

Giddens, A. (1992).

The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, love and Eroticism in modern societies (Kindle Ed.). Cambridge: Polity.

65

Chapter 5 “Family” of Unrelated People Introduction

In the last chapter, we had described the forming of a family dwelling unit in terms of social boundary. It finally arrived into three space identities: My Place, Our Place 1 and Our Place 2.

Shared houses, today mostly derives from existing family houses. If there’s no intended renovation, the space structure of the two is the same. However, the relationship of residents changed from intimate to unrelated.

In this chapter, we are going to analyse shared house based on the same space of a family house and a different relationship lives inside.

5.1 Small Public Different people

Figure 35. A woodcut from William Caxton’s second edition of The Canterbury Tales printed in 1483

Different people gathered in shared house. They come from different age, culture, profession, ethnic, social status, and numerous other backgrounds. By share housing, such diversity could happens in domestic environment, but not only in public spaces, which means a certain kind of publicness is brought into an intimate space.

We have such condition in human history or some less-civilized societies, in which a domestic environment is less private and even not allowed to be private according to social norms. For example there is a common feature in many Chinese farm villages that even one has a private room, it is always open, otherwise a sense of defensive is presented towards the community. In such community, although everyone is different, they are related, neither by individual choice nor kindship, but by social norms.

In non-literate societies for example, such social norm

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derives from a collective power against a common enemy, the nature or some other tribes. By sharing lifes, people in a community can do something which an individual couldn’t achieve, and which could benefit each individuals.

Similar aims

Related by living together

In shared houses, flatmates have some common aims: saving money, more social life, loneliness, and so on, with saving money dominants in most situations, like what several data proved in Part I. And people know the others they are going to live with have these similar aims, without knowing who exactly they are.

On the other hand, to most of the flatmates, saving money is not the catalyst drives people live together, but live together is the means to reach their aim. Living together is more like a compensation than a benefit, which is an important difference from the other collective societies like non-literate tribes or in today’s context, co-housing communities. In this condition, people are not intended to build a relationship with those who share the environment with them, but in order to reach the other aim, people share their environment, and they cannot escape from building a relationship, hopefully a good one, with unknown others since the aim is about accommodating but not the other collaboration like workshops or team sports.

It is a small scaled public sphere restricted by space, not an intimate community, nor merely a collaborative event.

So there is one major difference between flatmates and family members is that, the former one build their relationship before living together, whereas the later one reverse it. The former one is living together by related, and the later is related by living together.

Figure 36. Left: Relationship as premise. Right: Relationship built in existing environment

Routinization

Figure 37. Pieter Bruegel the Elder.(1559). Netherlandish Proverbs.

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69

In this mode, people normally only choose the house but not who exactly to live with. Screening process take effect for one to avoid people with some behavior which is obviously cannot cope with, like smoking, with pets, homosexual, etc. Many flat-sharing websites have such categories helping people do this. But it is far from forming a good relationship for living together in a domestic environment like a family. It is full of unpredictablility.

Social penetration theory

Space of small public

How a space relates people? In their social penetration theory, Altman and Taylor described how merely a frequent mutual-exposure changes people’s inter-relationship: As relationships develop, they penetrate deeper and deeper into private and personal matters. This exposes vulnerabilities, so trust has to be developed along the way.1

Unpredictable relationship

It is also called “onion theory”, since the penetration goes gradually from outside-in as intimacy grows. We can see a simplified diagram is provided by Baack, Fogliasso & Harris on Figure 38.

Being enclosed in a domestic space, people are unavoidably expose themselves to each other in a high frequency, by which a relationship is built not consciously but naturally.

A final rountinised relationship in this simple and if we can say, laissez-faire model, however, is highly unpredictable. Some better and some worse, as we can see a extended model illustrated in Figure 39. In reality, we can see some of flatmates can build a good relationship like a family, whereas some others break the relationship in painful frustration.

The question to us is clear: is this process able to be controlled or not?

1.

Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social Penetration: the development of interpersonal relationships.

New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston.

Figure 38. A simplified social penetration model. Baack, D., Fogliasso, C., & Harris, J. (2000). The Personal Imapact of Ethical Decisiosn: A Social Penetration Theory. Journal of Business Ethics, (24), 39–49.

Comparing with family model, the process of retreating from public is accomplished only partially in the case of shared house, due to its success of escaping from a larger society, but arriving in a smaller public, not intimacy. (See Figure 40) The spatial structure is the same but people’s relationship inside changed. Admittedly, relationship among flatmates also changes by time, of course not only through mutual exposure, but many other mechanisms and conscious efforts of people themselves, since nobody want to have a bad relationship with the others in a restricted space. But as a common sense, we cannot get along with everyone in a same intimate level, and we don’t necessarily do it. If we unluckily had a bad relationship, it seems that we fall into it but not choose to be: Why should I live with that guy?

The condition “live with” is shaped by both relationship and space: without relationship, we live alone; without a limited space, we merely exist but not live with the others.

Furthermore, the relatively stable composition of users clearly distinguish such space from a public one.

What kind of place it is? Let’s zoom in again to see what exactly happens in a shared house.

Family House

Figure 39. Unpredictable relationship. Ibid.

Figure 40. Retreat to Small Public.

Shared House

Privacy

Privacy

Intimacy

Small public

Public

Public

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5.2 The fluctuation of four space Identities

unpredictability of their flatmates. A relatively stable presenting others is considered as a part of the environment, and in My Place, we can control who we are going to live with.

In family house, we explained three main space identities: My Place Our Place 1 and Our Place 2.

In shared house there are four, at least.

Other’s Place My Place

As described before, My Place has three main features: privilege of using, control of threshold, and appropriation.

It is the basis a home can be called as a home.

In shared house, private bedroom could be concerned as My Place2. One has privilege of using of it and control of the entrance, and most importantly, it is the place one goes ‘back to’ in the last phase in everyday ritual.

However, hardly everyone lives in a shared house would call their bedroom as their home. In a general term, also hardly everyone would admit the whole shared living unit as their home. In this sense, those who do not have such attachment to shared houses are homeless people.

Homelessness or rootlessness nowadays is a common living status derives from modern life, especially popular among young people, who prefer to exchange their ‘root’ with a ‘wing’ for exploring the world. Shared house is one housing type derives from such high mobility. Rather than a problem, it is a fact.

On the other hand, shared house can become a home accordingly. Dovey pointed out in his essay Home and Homelessness:

2.

Again, we have to clarify that we are not going to discuss shared bedroom.

Dormitory in our setting is another type of housing and should be discussed separately.

Our Place 1

People who are thoroughly immersed in an activity that they love can convey a sense of home to that place. Thus home may be the relationship between an intellectual and a set of ideas, a pianist and a piano, a cook and a kitchen, a gardener and a garden, a sportsperson and a playing field.3

Like when you go to the primary school in your hometown with your adolescent memories, the feeling is “I am back”.

Although everyone hope to have My Place, and it is reasonable that one’s home, even a temporary one, ought to be My Place, the commitment of a place is not guaranteed for everyone in their shared houses, mainly due to the

3.

Dovey, K. (1985).

Home and Homelessness.

In I. Altman & C. M. .

Werner (Eds.), Home Environment (pp. 33–64).

New York: Plenum Press.

More than the presenting others, there is a unpresenting others that fix an upper limit of one’s feeling of My Place: the landlord.

One year could be a normal period of signing a contract in shared house. Compare to buying a house or long-term renting, this period is too short to make a decision to fully appropriate the physical environment such as big change of furnitures or interior materials, let alone partition walls.

Legally speaking, limits are also more in shared housing compare to the other housing modes.

A shared house is firstly belongs to the house owner. For every other tenant who lives in the property, it is Other’s Place.4 As described in Chapter 5, Our Place 1 is the place of relaxation, describing the place in which people can effortlessly live together. And it is the place represents the happiness and warmth of intimacy. It is interesting in shared house.

We will discussed it in two phases.

Let’s start with the first phase. In the story we talked in Introduction, there is a detail which mostly shocked us that we didn’t talk about. It was when we had the biggest quarrel with Ms. R, the lodger and girlfriend of Mr. M. It was a storm.

We were complaining again about the uncleanness of Mr. M, and Ms. R started to argue: ““ You only take care of the place you want to care, but not the

place the others care. The place I care is the bathroom. Look at the toilet, you never clean it! Every time I come here, I do not dare to use your toilet! It is black.”

We then fought back:

4.

There is another situation generates Other’s Place, that sub-tenant is illegal. In some other cases people live together with the landlord. We are not going to discuss about both of them, since it is unstable that a future development of law ought to set the equality of right for everyone who live in shared houses.

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““ Well, you think it is us who should clean it for you, but not Mr.

M?”

She then said this: ““ No! What I want to say is, we, never complain what we feel

bad about you, but you do. You know why? Because we always consider you as family members! Do you understand the word ‘care’ among family members? We take care of you! But you don’t know how to take care of us!”

Family member was the term she putted on us. In her declaration there are several meanings. Firstly, a family member do not blame another family member, which means they tolerant each other, even for something they don’t like. In this logic we should not blame them because they treat us as family members; secondly, one of her family member should not only tolerant on her improper behaviors, but knows what she will feel improper with, and solve it, for example clean the toilet for her.

Regardless of the legal status of Ms. R5 and the fact that she didn’t clean the place she dissatisfied with by herself, what is the role here of Mr. M? There was a time we went to Venice for three days travel, Mr. M and Ms. R were the only two people lived in the house. When we came back, we were horrified by the condition, especially the toilet. Mr. M was not the cleaner at all. In the sense of family member, Mr. R was consistent: obviously, she didn’t blame him. It was us who blamed.

With little doubt, people wish to have the same level of relaxation in shared house like at home. In the story above, we can have a hypothesis that people will unconsciously bring their Our Place 1 in memory that embedded in their everyday behavior into a home-like environment, regardless who they are living with and what do the others think.

Since they feel relax in a familiar way, and it is the place of relaxation. But for relationship, the establishment was completed solely in individual’s mind, without considering the real existence of the others. This is how we became “family members” of Ms. R. We can see a clearer problematic pattern. Firstly, each

5.

As said before, Ms. R was a lodger who’s name didn’t exist on the contract. Nor is she a sub-tenant, since she didn’t pay the same rent as we did.

person have a particular Our Place 1, which is formed in their own family house. Secondly, they bring this memory with them into shared house, which is a home-like environment. Thirdly, with the willingness of relaxation, each pre-formed Our Place 1 is practiced by their owners inside a new shared space. Conflict is hard to avoid.

Harmony goes with luck.

Therefore, home-like environment is a heuristic environment which encourages relaxation. It is common that when we feel relax in a place, we say “feels like home”. However, when such feeling is presented by actions, it is not always plausible. In some situation, home-like environment is empowered by only its appearance, without any particular bounded right and obligation defined by social norms. The upper photo shows people relax in an IKEA store like at home. Although IKEA is a public space and people around are all unacquainted, those who sleep feel purely relax, regardless of what the others’ feel.

At this point we can have a review of the problems we depicted in Part I. Firstly for unpaid bill, if people do not intended to do so, for example they know if the others do not pay for him

Figure 41. People sleeping in IKEA store, China. Retrived from http://www.scmp.com/ news/china/article/1300942/ ikea-last-cracks-china-marketsuccess-has-meant-adaptinglocal-ways?page=all.

74 Better Shared House or her, the others meet trouble too, so the others will pay, it is again the “family member effect”. People feel naturally supported by the others like in an intimate relationship.

Take with only this hope, they act so.

Lack of facility works in a dialectic way. On one hand a single facility set is a symbol of family house; on the other hand it tell people it is not when there is a jam.

Conflict on cleaning, borrowing without notice or return, noise and guest are all symptoms of “family member” effect. Different Our Place 1 are overlapped.

According to Moore, in two situations there is right of intrusion: one derives from the situation when the others in danger; the other derives from love and affection6. For some irresponsible behaviors, in a intimate relationship, “there’s no need for shame”. As we talked, in Our Place 1, everything will not beyond one’s expectation.

For the “family member effect” in which family members are created by illusion, we can find an answer from Giddens:

75

6.

Moore, B. (1984).

Privacy: Studies in Social and Cultural History. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc.

If the psychological ‘giving’ to the other is not mutual, and reasonably well balanced, one individual is likely to define her or his needs without regard to the other, expecting her or him to go along with them.7

Relationship management as we inquired in Part I thus serves as the tool to unify different Our Place 1. Yet this process in some extreme cases is too effort to practice.

In those cases, people either choose to “Share Out”, or to “hibernate”, if a more destructive solution is even less cost-effective.

An other evidence of such Our Place 1 is underused spaces. If no one has previous experience of some kind of spaces, or only someone has but take care of the space need the other initiatives which is usually supported by members in an intimate relationship, the space will appear to be underused. Like the backyard in a house shared by students from Berlage Institute in Delft (Figure 42). On the right side of the fence is the shared house, the other side is a normal family house used by two old couples.

7.

Giddens, A. (1992). The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, love and Eroticism in modern societies (Kindle Ed.). Cambridge: Polity.

On the other hand, if we talk about luck, the first phase of Our Place 1 in shared house is not alway unhappy. When egoism meets altruism, it may works — sometimes, it suddenly, just works. In one case we know, the four girls get along with each other very well, A in charge of cleaning, B cook for everyone, C is rich and sometimes exchange seafood with the other’s labor, and D do everything in turn.

Everything works fine, until D suddenly left without telling any reason. After that, A, B and C choose to share the room in three people but not invite a new tenant.

Lucky story happens, but does not last. From this story, we can start to talk about the second phase of Our Place 1 in shared house.

The second phase of Our Place 1 exists. It is the place people also effortlessly live together and feel relax, but based on mutual consent and routinized relationship with those who exactly they are living with. No illusion, and not based on “just match”. We may think about a symphony, which is highlighted in the book Together by Richard Sennett.8 People in a symphony plays different roles with different instrument, and their relationship could last for a long time without necessarily being intimate. The same relationship can also be found in other kinds of music

Figure 42. Left side: Backyard of family house; Right side: Backyard of shared house.

8.

Sennett, R. (2012). Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation (Kindle ed.). Yale University Press.

76 Better Shared House bands like jazz or rock, in which people fully enjoy the togetherness with the others by doing a cooperative work.

One may find a difference in the situation of share housing.

People in a band cooperate for the music for its own sake, but people in a shared house do not always intend to live with the others, but just cannot live without the others’ sharing of the rent. To be more direct, it is like to say: “I don’t need you, I need your money.” Even seems not so plausible, for answering this incoherence, we need to have a look on the last space identity in shared house: Our Place 2.

77

Figure 43. Symphony

percent10. The large background also forces the transformation of intimacy, in which a long term relationship is diminishing. If trace back to the space model we developed in Chapter 5, today the space of privacy is enforced while space of intimacy is weakened.

Sennett used the word withdrawal instead of retreat used

by Moore, together with words of living in a withdrawn state: solitude, isolation, and loneliness. Retreat for Moore is an action to avoid unbearable social obligation; withdrawal for Sennett is a mechanism to against anxiety. In comparing these two concepts, although unbearable social obligation also generates anxiety, but in the explanation for the later one, Sennett illustrates Narcissism and Complacency as two causes of anxiety, which all derive from inward impulse rather than a up-down obligations assigned by social norms. Behind these two descriptions is the evolvement from collectivism to individualism.

10.

Klinenberg, E. (2012).

Going Solo: The extraordinary rise and surprising appeal of living alone.

New York: Penguin Press.

[. . .] for practical reasons, as well as companionship, we want to share, and yet we do not want to have to share somethings ever, almost nothing all the time.11

Our Place 2

The difficulty of shared house doesn’t only derives from various illusion created in Our Place 1, but also a larger social background, that is a well-developed individualism in modern society, embodied as the “uncooperative-self ” pointed out by Sennett9 in his book Together. People simply do not want to cooperate.

We said shared house is a future trend, but if we look at the reality, we see that in big cities like Paris, London and New York, one third of adult population live alone, in big metropolitan like Manhattan, the number is reaching 50

9.

Ibid.

11.

Marris, P. (1996). The Trouble with Sharing.

In G. C. Hemmens, H. J. Charles, & J. Carp (Eds.), Under one roof: Issues and innovations in shared housing.

Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Chapter 6 Two Principles In an interview, architect Ryue Nishizawa talked about his idea on city life: [. . .] People don’t live only in the house, people walk in the street, they go to the theatre, to the park,or they use the train station; they use everything. Many things are happening at the same time. This is a city, I think. So, one of the simplest ways to imagine a beautiful life is to participate in doing a city. The house is just a very small portion of your life. It’s very limiting to describe with the house an entire way of life.1

Share house provides a cost-effective solution for enjoying city life. In other words, shared house is not necessarily be a home of an individual. For example in the situation of “share out”, city could be more like the place for one to go back, and shared house is the place to go to sleep; or, there is even no the term go back any more, an individual belongs to the whole city but not any smaller scaled space. In this sense, home is flattened into the city together with other areas like bar, school, cinema, etc., etc. It is a place for sleep.

city home

city

Figure 44. Paris cafe discussion

home

1.

Borasi, G. (Ed.).

(2008). Some ideas on living in London and Tokyo : Stephen Taylor, Ryue Nishizawa (p. 87). Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Figure 45. Transformation of urban context.

80 Better Shared House In previous chapters, we have analysed problems and their causes inside shared house. Although difficult, cooperative skill is proved to be the most important solution for a better life, otherwise the high level of unpredictability is potentially going to generate frustration.

In family house, the space structure was created depending on human relationship inside. If human relationship changes, space ought to be modified accordingly.

The changing of intimate relationship could be seen in the changing of family houses. For example today in many family houses there are no double bedrooms, each individual is able to conduct their absolute retreat into privacy. As architects, we also hope to find some spatial solutions of shared house for unrelated people live together harmoniously.

In this chapter, we will show two main principles to make a shared house more adaptable, based on analysis we have done in the previous chapters. They are: • Enhance My Place in individual room, and • Enhance Our Place 2 in common area As a conclusion of the whole theoretical part, we will explain why these two principles can make things better; And we will show how to realize them by some more detailed strategies in the next chapter.

6.1 Enhance “my place” in Individual Room If we zoom in into Mr. Nishizawa’s overview of city, we can find a core inside the home space, which belongs to an individual rather than an intimate relationship. As talked before, it is this core that protects one’s privacy, that allows one retreat or withdraw from the anxiety in the mass public. We do not belongs to our family but the city is a metaphor that presents the fact that we belongs to ourselves. Individualism is embodied as an enhanced individual space. In a shared house, we need to provide such space that allows one to identify with.(Figure 46)

81

city home

city home

A room can be perceived as a home in terms of psychological attachment. But in a family house it is difficult, due to its dependency of the other rooms in terms of function.

Some everyday rituals have to be conducted in other rooms of the house.

To enhance of My Place is to weaken such dependency of individual room and enhance a sense of home in itself.

If appropriation here can be realized in a higher level, the condition of homelessness will diminish.

However, the challenge is obvious: sharing. It is impossible to make a single room self-sufficient like a studio, otherwise the rent goes high, we lost the primary benefit of shared house. So we also need to carefully modify the common area.

6.2 Enhance “our place 2” in Common Area In principle, the more a person perceives Our Place 2, the less he or she practice their own Our Place 1, the less the “family member effect” will happen.

An enhanced Our Place 2 should be a place encourages people cooperate in a positive mood. In fact when people choose such kind of living, they choose to participate in this cooperation. Those who could not do well, for sure, are lack of such skill. But is it possible that we can provide a

Figure 46. Transformation of urban context.

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better stage for it as a handy tool, which at least give people some confidence to do it?

As Marris pointed out that “nobody wants to have to share”, but in another way around, if one choose to share, he or she will not want to be bothered by that. “I want your money but not you” is already bothering since in such condition I have to dealing with you but not cooperate with you. It is unnecessary.

The uncomfortable feeling upon the others is exaggerated by the home-like environment. If we do not perceive the common space as a part of our home, or in other words we do not perceive My Place, the individual room belongs to the whole shared house, the common area is exactly the same as many other public interiors like bar, gym center, etc., etc.

One may say the relationship is different, since in the other public institutions the others’ presenting has more fluidity than what in a shared house, that we see a very limited number of same faces everyday. But in terms of time, if we do not intend to share our time with flatmates, there’s really little time we must meet each other, like the case of “share out”.

In this sense, if we could diminish the sense of home in the common area, the unconsciousness of personal Our Place 1 will not happen any more.

The term has to be clarified for everyone in share housing, that is “We are making life together”. Sharing is a compensation for affordability, but it is not necessarily to be perceived as a negative exchange. It is fair, and it is a pure cooperation. And for us, it is to provide a heuristic environment to allow such cooperation easily being conducted among different people.

In music, such kind of cooperation is jam session, or normally we just say jam, in which people, of course could be unacquainted ones, cooperate for a piece of music without rehearsing.

We are making such a place for an enjoyable jam.

Figure 47. Pieter Brueghel the Younger. (1616). The Wedding Dance in a Barn.

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85 Inc.

References

Preiser, W. F. E., Vischer, J., & White, E. T. (1991). Design intervention: Toward a more humane architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston.

Rapoport, A. (1969). House form and culture. Englewood Cliffs N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Anthony, K. H. (1991). Housing the single-parent family. In W. F. E. Preiser, J. Vischer, & E. T. White (1991). Design intervention: Toward a more humane architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Schoenauer, N. (2000). 6,000 years of housing. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Relph, E. (1976).Place and placelessness. London: Pion Limited.

Seamon, D. (2000). Phenomenology, place, environment, and architecture: A Review.

In S. Wapner, J. Demick, T. Yamamoto, and H Minami (Eds.), Theoretical Perspectives in Environment-Behavior Research (pp. 157-78). New York: Plenum.

Briggs, J. L. (1970). Never in anger: Portrait of an Eskimo family. Cambridge, Mass.

Borasi, G. (Ed.). (2008). Some ideas on living in London and Tokyo : Stephen Taylor, Ryue Nishizawa (p. 87). Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life (Kindle.). New York: Doubleday.

Sennett, R. (2012). Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation (Kindle ed.).

Yale University Press.

Chermayeff, S., & Alexander, C. (1965). Community and privacy: Toward a new architecture of humanism. Doubleday.

Sommer, R. (2007). Personal space; Updated, the behavioral basis of design. Bristol: Bosko Books.

Hemmens, G. C., Hoch, C., & Carp, J. (1996). Under one roof: Issues and innovations in shared housing. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Weil, S. (2002). The need for roots: Prelude to a declaration of duties towards mankind. Retrived from http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/f/23166410.html

Cooper-Marcus, C. (2006). House as a mirror of self: Exploring the deeper meaning of home (Kindle ed.). Lake Worth: Nicolas-Hays, Inc. Davis, S. (1977). Interiors-Accommodating diversity. In S. Davis (Ed.), The form of housing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Davis, S. (1977). The Form of housing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Dovey, K. (1985). Home and homelessness. In I. Altman & C. M. . Werner (Eds.), Home environment (pp. 33–64). New York: Plenum Press.

Franck, K. A., & Ahrentzen, S. (1989). New households, new housing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Fromm, D. (1991). Collaborative communities: Cohousing, central living, and other new forms of housing with shared facilities. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Giddens, A. (1992). The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies (Kindle Ed.). Cambridge: Polity.

Giddens, A. (1999) ‘Family’, Reith Lectures, 4, BBC Radio 4, 28 April.

Gifford, R. (2007). Environmental psychology principles and practice (4th ed.). Optimal Books.

Gillies, V., Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group., & South Bank University.

(2003). Family and intimate relationships: A review of the sociological research. London: London South Bank University.

Hall, E. (1990). The hidden dimension. New York: Anchor Books.

Institut für Kreative Nachhaltigkeit (Berlin). (2012). Cohousing cultures: Handbuch für selbstorganisiertes, gemeinschaftliches und nachhaltiges Wohnen = Cohousing cultures : handbook for self-organized, community-oriented and sustainable housing.

Jung, C. (1963). Memories, dreams, reflections. New York: Pantheon Books.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow (Kindle Ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Klinenberg, E. (2012). Going solo: The extraordinary rise and surprising appeal of living alone.

New York: Penguin Press.

Marris, P. (1996). The trouble with sharing. In G. C. Hemmens, C. J. Hoch, & J. Carp (Eds.). Under one roof: Issues and innovations in shared housing. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Moore, B. (1984). Privacy: Studies in social and cultural history. New York: M. E. Sharpe,

Websites

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1300942/ikea-last-cracks-china-marketsuccess-has-meant-adapting-local-ways?page=all

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part III dESIGN

Rather than an ends, the final part serves as a means, in order to exemplify one answer among numerous others for the conclusion we made. More probably than not, they are not the best solutions, limited by our current capability.

But we believe those strategies take effect in a more controllable way than most of the conventional interventions of shared houses based on existing family dwelling units.

Flatmates’ well being could be raised in a certain level.

In the three chapters, the previous two provide strategies under the two principles, supported by some case studies of related examples; the last chapter is an integrated example we made by implecating some of those strategies.

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Chapter 7 How to Enhance “my place” in Individual Room

7.1 General description: increasing sense of control Control is one of the basic human behavior of territory claiming. Besides taking effect on the others, it also influences space, ideas, and other resources in the territory.

The willingness of conducting so differs highly in respect to three types of territory, a system developed by Irwin Altman. Primary territory, family house for instance, tend to bear the strongest control, while the least control dedicating to public territory. The control of secondary territory, like personal desk at school, favorite cafeteria and so on, is in the middle. The control of it is less essential to the current occupant and is more likely to change, rotate, or be shared with strangers1.

By increasing sense of control, the perception of individual room will be more like primary territory, a miniature house of one own. It serves as a base for further appropriation which is identifying with the place. It refers more to the dialog in between man and place, deriving various individual images of place. When the others present, it could function as a claim on property ownership or privilege of using. In conclusion, self-manifestation in one way confirms an inward My Place to the self, in the other way conduct potentially an outward My Place to the others.

1.

Gifford, R. (2007).

Environmental psychology principles and practice.

Optimal Books.

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7.2 Surveillance

7.3 Flexible interior

As a core concept in both Jane Jacobs’s insight of city and defensive theory, surveillance proves to be an important activity through which the surveillant, or we say territory owner, could obtain sense of security, and further crime or anti-social behavior in the territory tend to be decreased.

Based on the purpose of territory control, if we could shrink the scale from urban street to the common area in a shared house, it is not difficult for us to think about openings on the wall separating private and common area.

In doing so, flatmates can easily throw a glimpse outside, having an idea what is happening there, good or bad, and think how to respond: join it, or stay in his or her own territory. It enables flatmates to shed the sense of control to common area by issuing a visual priority, which in turn enhances the sense of control and security in their own domain.

Further adjustments on interior are always desirable since there could not be any setting that can satisfy its user perfectly all the time. In shared house, there are two levels of meaning that require such flexibility. One is the transition of different owners of each room, that each individual has their own standard of the environment; Two is the transition of everyday life of the same individual, that the adjustment of environment would be necessary to meet different scenarios.

It is tightly linked with the idea appropriation we talked in the previous chapters. It has to be easily taken care of, and easily identified with one’s own. It is a very essential point to realize My Place in an individual dwelling unit. Flexibility therefore has to be respected and responded properly in considering flatmate’s satisfaction, or we say appropriation of the living environment.

A flexible interior is needed, ensuring abundant alternatives for adjustment for different, or the same individual.

In reaching this purpose, the most important thing an architect should do is establishing a base where future works can rely on.

According to the following case studies, the determinants of effectiveness, zoning, order, and spaciousness, ought to be handled carefully.

Zoning related with room shape

Figure 48. Our cat observing Santa Clause from interior.

A rectangle, let’s say, with one side double longer than the other side, ought to be easily subdivided. In contrary, a square does not give any sense of direction, generating a homogeneous pattern, thus makes itself hard to be divided.

That is to say, the shape of a given room could be determinate of defining its potential of zoning.

One study referring to room shape is from Michael Mostoller whose aim was to rationalize a housing type in order to provide a relatively comfortable interior for residents with economic constrain. It was further applied to design single room occupancy (SRO) hotels.2 The study concludes that the 8×16 prototype room is the most

2.

Mostoller, M. (1991).

The Design of a Single Room with Furniture for a Residential Hotel. In K. A. Franck & S. Ahrentzen (Eds.), New households, new housing. Van Nostrand Reinhold.

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capable one of accommodating alternatives. Two arrangements are presented in Figure 49. For Michael Mostoller, long room allows more clearly differentiated zoning of front, middle, and back, which increases the sense of scale. Homelike feeling of the room may arise since the owner could conduct various activities in different zones of the same space. The long walls provide a strong organizational axis for arranging the furnitures, which is like a guide line that lowers the effort of thinking where and how to put everything.

Figure 49. The 8-by-16-foot prototype room. Mostoller, M. (1991). The Design of a Single Room with Furniture for a Residential Hotel. In K. A. Franck & S. Ahrentzen (Eds.). (1991).

New households, new Hhousing.

New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Figure 50. The one-room apartment of author. Loft area occupied mainly by a bed is up on the entrance corridor.

Visual order of storage system

If zoning represents the most basic layer of order, referring to the usage of space, further thought could be zoomed in questioning how things can be organized in visual tidiness.

The very concept could be perfectly exemplified by Office Samurai in Tokyo, owned by Kashiwa Sato. In his book SATO KASHIWA NO CHO SEIRIJUTSU (Ultimate Method for Reaching the Essentials), Sato elaborated how an orderly working space increases worker’s efficiency.

Allowing a separation of zones, L-shaped room takes effect in the same way.

Zoning with sleeping loft

By lifting sleeping area up, loft dwellings naturally apart themselves into two: one is day area which can be freely defined; the other one is night area where bed normally plays a central role. Thus, a room with loft area clearly defines different zones in terms of the level of privacy and the time of using.

Figure 51. Office Samurai.

Sato, K. (2007). SATO KASHIWA NO CHO SEIRIJUTSU. Nikkei Publishing. Inc.

94  Better Shared House Many designers are bothered by the mess working environment. For Sato it derives from the fact that most of people put working in advance of making a good environment for working.3 Although different from a working place, in many cases, flatmates meet such situation as well. Especially in a limited sized space, any chaos will decrease people’s well being of living inside, and people will sometimes lost the identification of the whole space, even abuse it, like many examples shown in SRO hotels that the physical environment was not only lack of maintain but also destroyed. One destroy his or her home.4 Sato highly promotes self-control of organizing the environment in advance and except that, the unification of storage system was highlighted, that even everything is different and chaos inside the storage, if the storage itself is in order, everything in order. And keeping this order is with less effort. Beyond visual comfort, such order could directly increase efficiency of working and also the identification of the whole environment.

 95 merges with walls, deriving a highly integrated interior space with plain surfaces from floor to ceiling.

3. 

Sato, K. (2007). SATO KASHIWA NO CHO SEIRIJUTSU. Nikkei Publishing. Inc.

4.  Frank, K.A. (1991). The Single room occupancy hotel: A rediscovered housing type for single people. In K. A. Franck & S. Ahrentzen (Eds.), New Households, New Housing.

Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Figure 53.  Built-in cabinet in the Shaker room. Andrew, C., & Lochhead, E. (2005). Shaker vision: The art and architecture of the believers of the second appearing of Christ. Competing visions and disparate influences.

Compactness

Clei UK, a company specializing in producing transformable furniture system. Here, one can find that big sized furnitures, bed for example, are no longer mounted into walls but maybe wardrobes and book shelves. One step more, one furniture could be integrated with another one, occupying the same place as a whole but functioning in different moments and different ways. The picture shows one product among many others, a tilting single bed with vertical opening and slatted bed base.

In the day configuration it is provided with a front table that disappears while the bed opens, sliding and remaining located

,7>7?35A /AD= ,7>7?35A /AD= Figure 52.  Storage system of Office Samurai. Sato, K. (2007).

SATO KASHIWA NO CHO SEIRIJUTSU. Nikkei Publishing. Inc. 67E;9@ 9;G>;A ?3@LA@; D E 5>7; 67E;9@ 9;G>;A ?3@LA@; D E 5>7;

The built-in cabinetry and ample shelving of Shaker design, shown on the right page, which was highly endorsed by many art and architecture critics, contribute another way of achieving visual order. Visually speaking, built-in furniture

underneath the bed base without displacing anything on it.5

5.  Description of telemaco Work. Young System: Design & technology (2010). Clei UK.

(3F7@F B7@6;@9 (3F7@F B7@6;@9 Figure 54.  Telemaco Work.

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Portability

97

Despite of built-in storage, Shaker room is featured in its portable furnitures. One of the most well known image of Sharker design probably is the one below, the hanging chairs. Due to their lightness, people are able to hang the chairs on wall pegs while cleaning is on going or simply they are not in use.

with basin, toilet and bathtub or shower all in an integrated space. Once the household gets enough purchasing power, more TV sets and bathrooms may be added.

Back to shared house, sharing bathroom for sure lowers the living cost of flatmates while is often accused for its substandard, unfavorable and bothering features. If you can recall the problems of living together, it is quite easy to realize that nearly all of them may take place in bathroom, and if so, it could be the worst situation comparing to the same problem occurring in another shared space: the dispute about the cleanliness of bathroom allure you to imagine the shocks when you step into a bathroom in an unexpected condition; ‘borrowing’ in bathroom could be very annoying since stuffs of self-cleaning should be used strictly on individual basis; showering in the early morning and late night do cause noise for anyone who is struggle to fall asleep; ‘guest from hell’ could make the cleanliness issue more complicated.

In conclusion, we think that the benefit of having private bathroom can override the cost of doing so. Designers should try their best to find the feasible way even if doing so may be highly restricted by the limitation of property.

Figure 55. Shaker chair hanging on the wall pegs.

Andrew, C., & Lochhead, E. (2005). Shaker vision: The art and architecture of the believers of the second appearing of Christ. Competing visions and disparate influences.

7.4 Private sanitary facilities Exclusive access to bathroom can increase the well being of flatmate significantly. Among family members, the general pattern of sharing tends to be not having to share too much, but rather by sharing out.6 If there is only one TV set, conflict may easily occur there. So as bathrooms.

One can imagine four family members share one bathroom

6.

Marris, P. (1996). The Trouble with Sharing.

In G. C. Hemmens, H. J. Charles, & J. Carp (Eds.), Under one roof: Issues and innovations in shared housing.

Albany: State University of New York Press.

7.5 New Climate: p-p-c Model As the previous discussion shown, the conventional sequence of retreating is shutting public space out, entering commons, ending at private space. At the time intimate relationship still enjoyed a dominantly accepted discourse, the design of private house honestly manifests the sequence. We termed as Public-Common-Private (P-C-P).

In housing history, one can find innumerable types of dwelling differing in scale, function, way of construction, material and so on, but nearly none of them infringes P-C-P model. However, along with the fall of conventional family model in post traditional society, the statue of P-C-P was challenged, embodied as a new model: Public-Private-Common (P-P-C).

Figure 56. P-P-C model.

Klauser, W., & Yamamoto, R. (1999). Riken Yamamoto. Basel: Birkhaüser.

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Okayama house

Bearing in mind that conventional family dwelling is invalid for affording the changed relationship, architect Riken Yamamoto did a series of projects in middle and late 1980s by which he tried to give an answer. Under the notion that individual should claim a central role linking inward to family and outward to society, his objective of design is valuing the independence of individual the most, ensuring the freedom accordingly, and reuniting the individualized family members as a community.

1. Frontyard; 2. Private room; 3. Storage; 4. Terrace; 5. Courtyard; 6. Kitchen-dining; 7. Bathroom.

Figure 58. Plan of Okayama House. Klauser, W., & Yamamoto, R. (1999). Riken Yamamoto. Basel: Birkhaüser.

Children

member is expected to act on his or her own intention, inviting friends, being left alone, interacting with other members in short or long time and whatever.

Courthouse in Harvard

Figure 57. Photo of Okayama House. Retrived from http://riken-yamamoto.co.jp

In Okayama house, the residents enjoy maximum spatial and social independence by having independent access from public space while the companionship is underpinned by the courtyard opening to sky and shared bathroom and kitchen. [. . .] the smallest unit of society is not the dwelling/ family but the individual. [. . .] Whereas the family has mediated between

GoHomes

society and the individual up to now, the individual mediates between society and the family in this house.7

One may notice that living room, a place with strong communal image, does not present here. The courtyard, in one hand, serves as the functional substitution, in the other hand, hardly generates any social ritual, in a way, releasing people significantly from a obligatory communal life. Each

7.

Klauser, W., & Yamamoto, R. (1999).

Riken Yamamoto. Basel: Birkhaüser.

In the book Community and Privacy, referring to the health of family, Christopher Alexander argues that each member should be involved in communal life on voluntary basis, which requires recognition of the diversity of interests that occurs in the average family of adults and children. Separate domains with each group’s own device where one can decently be left alone are suggested as an essential strategy.

He clarifies his argument by asking the following question, serving as one points of the critical appraisal further used to evaluate several design projects.

Is the children’s domain directly accessible from outside so as not to interfere with the adult’s private and family domains? Questions of noise, interruption, and “dirt”.

Architect Ted Smith made his GoHome in the same way.

In 1983, the first one was realized in Del Mar. Smith tried to provide affordable housing with working space associated.

Each unit has two levels with the first floor in loft type, and two entrances from outside, one for professional purpose and the other for living. Kitchen, the only shared space, was placed in the backside of the asset, very small, and totally utilitarian. Residents can go to there through their private

Family

Adults

Figure 59. Court House In Harvard. Chermayeff, S., & Alexander, C. (1965).

Community and privacy: Toward a new architecture of humanism.

Doubleday.

100 Better Shared House unit. Individuality of the unit was protected while connectedness was unfavored.

In architect’s own words, GoHome “was not meant to be a beautiful communal living space… It is missing the thing that makes a place feel like a home, the kitchen. Most of the GoHome is workplace.”

101 and practical, leaving social benefits of sharing out of the main objectives.8

8.

Franck, K. A., & Ahrentzen, S. (Eds.). (1991). New households, new housing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Figure 60. Bubble Diagram of Gohome Del Mar. Retrived from the presentation of Ted Smith at Making Room Design Showcase & Symposium, Japan Society, New York.

Figure 61. Plan of Gohome Del Mar. Franck, K. A., & Ahrentzen, S. (Eds.). (1991).

New households, new housing.

New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Campus Court in Eugene

Campus Court in Eugene, Oregon, has four people living together as one unit, so called quad, providing each resident a private bedroom containing toilet, while the bathtub or shower is shared, adjacent to dinning area. In one quad, each bedroom has two doors, one direct faces the outside, and the other to the common area. It enables flatmate to choose freely whether he enters common area or not without any social pressure coming from others.

Sometimes in a normal apartment, you are back home, being tired, do not want to meet people, pass through common area reluctantly, being afraid of any potential engagement waiting there.

With limited number of windows, linear and tight layout, common area is treated as a purely utilitarian function. K. A. Franck commended the intentions behind are economic

Figure 62. Plan of Campus Court in Eugene. Franck, K. A., & Ahrentzen, S. (Eds.). (1991).

New households, new housing.

New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

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Chapter 8 How to Enhance “our place 2” in Common Area

8.1 General description: Heuristic setting for cooperation

Figure 63. Photograph by Gianni Berengo Gardin.

Highly appreciated by city planner, architect, writer, artist, critic, intellectual and mass public, Italian cities are renowned for their long lasting liveliness. Italians have the smallest living area in comparison to the other European citizens, however, as a compensation, they have the largest living room, their public space, lovely street and inviting piazza.1 Citizens got accustomed to spend relatively long time outside, in turn, many of them even do not change shoes when they are back home. Social interactions are nurtured by sidewalk café, gelateria, apertivo, open-air market, public park, piazza with fountain, pedestrian upon the ancient city walls and innumerable others, which in total give shape to public life.

Being protected by My Place, the common space of shared house ought to be enjoyable, not as a home, but as a good public space. Described in Part I, shared houses in Japan maintained by agencies can be called public space, like a cafeteria. However, in most of the cases, if there is no a third party in charge of maintenance of the common area, the destiny of Our Place is fully shaped by the community live inside. Is it possible the community could be formed easier, even if not everyone is good at social life? Let’s try to lower the cost of forming a community by space.

1.

Smith, G. E. K. (1955).

Italy builds: Its modern architecture and native inheritance. L’Italia costruisce.

New York: Reinhold.

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8.2 Shared Cooking and dining

In Denmark, common facilities in cohousing derive dual benefits, practical and social. The former is just like what New Yorkers thought in 19th century, while the later is no longer just a by-product, but become a main attracting point of living together. Surely, it is practical advantages, serving as the first brick, paving the way to a cooperative living.

Not like hello, good morning and the other similar greeting words at all, Chinese people use a very unique phrase in case of meeting by chance, “Chi le ma?”, meaning “did you eat?”. It seems that food play an important role in human sociality. Different from weather talks among British people, gastronomy is a theme that generates an extremely wide spectrum of activity: growing and picking ingredients, preparing and cooking, dining at home, eating at restaurant, “apertivo” at bar, picnic in the park, BBQ on the beach, vineyard itinerary and countless others.

Not only serves as utilitarian space, cooking and dining space are extremely important for social life. In such concern, although sometimes it generates problems like facility jam, we highly promote a shared cooking and dining space. We believe it will provide positive stimulus for cooperation.

Collective housing in nineteenthcentury New York

Eating together in Cohousing

At that time, the efficiency of centralized cooking and laundry work seemed to be wildly recognized. A writer in the late 1870s recorded his experience of collective dinning, depicting how good is the dinning room, tableware, waiter and the food, the less amount of house work due to such arrangement, and an unavoidably high level of socializing with neighbors.2 People welcomed collective dining mostly for its economy and efficiency.

Sociability in this case is merely a by-product, however, for us, it is important to get to know such phenomenon, convincing us the contribution of cooking and dining to human interaction.

More evidences of so are available in cooperative housing.

According to a survey of important aspects of cohousing in Sweden, a large number of residents in four projects consider collective meals to be socially important, ranging from 48 percent to 90 percent. The statement of a resident from Blenda is that the dinning room is the heart of the house and therefore enormously important.3

Figure 64. Dinner at the common house in Trudeslund cohousing, Denmark.

Dorit, F. (1991). Collaborative Communities: Cohousing, Central Living, and Other New Forms of Housing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Figure 65. Residents rotate in cooking crews six days a week. Sawærket cohousing, Denmark. Ibid.

2.

Cromley, E. (1991).

Apartments and Collective Life in Nineteenth-Century New York. In K. A. Franck & S. Ahrentzen (Eds.), New Households, New Housing.

Van Nostrand Reinhold.

3.

Ibid.

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8.3 Soft edge: Transitions from private areas to common areas As mentioned in Surveillance (page 90), visual access between private and common area was addressed, referring more to territory control. Here, being mentioned again, it is expected to promote social interactions. For example, a door with window between private kitchen and common area allows parents to watch children playing outside or to call out to a passing neighbor. Visual access to the common area, whether these areas are indoors or outdoors, also allows people to see activities they may want to join.4

A “soft edge”, that is, a semiprivate area between the private dwelling and the common area, further increases the opportunities for casual socializing. As the “front porch”, both literally and figuratively speaking, this area immediately in front of the home allows people to observe and take part in community life as they choose.

In our case, both of the two approaches prove to be valid since the goal of nurturing casual socializing in co-housing is essential for a cooperative living in shared house. The first one is just the other utility of openings on the wall.

Creating semiprivate area for each flatmate separately may be highly dependent on the size of property. For apartment with limited area, the buffer may be created in a new way other than spatially in-between.

8.4 Spatial diversity for different activities 4.

McCamant, K. M., & Durrett, C. R. (1991).

Cohousing in Denmark.

In K. A. Franck & S. Ahrentzen (Eds.), New Households, New Housing.

New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

The common areas themselves should be designed to provide different types of gathering spaces. Again sensitive transitions from the most intimate gathering spaces to the most public encourage an active community life.

Figure 66. Left image shows the main door of a loft apartment facing directly to the street, where no buffer area exists. Right image shows a semi private area in Trudeslund co-housing, Denmark.

The common area in both of shared housing and cohousing is intended to serve people with different interests, lifestyles, personalities and so on. Due to the relatively small size of shared house, ideally speaking, in case of everybody wants to use the common area at the time, it should be possible, meaning that little groups may commit to various activities and do not interfere with each other. Spatial

Figure 67. Space for different activities.

108 Better Shared House

109 move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put. This

diversity therefore is introduced to realize such an image.

Difference lies in size, proportion, sense of openness, level of lightness and so on. Flatmates can easily find the place fit them the most, no matter being alone or meeting friends.

is why, perhaps, people so often move a chair a few inches this way and that before sitting in it, with the chair ending up about where it was in the first place. [. . .] They are a declaration of autonomy, to oneself, and rather satisfying.5

Here, we present some photos shot during the period that an experimental project, Chance Encounter on the Tiber, was on going. Many photos record the moments of moving chairs, from which one can easily feel the happiness of public life which is underpinned by flexible furniture.

8.5 Flexible furniture Other than space, furniture is another key element of supporting diverse activities. First of all, simple activities like sitting, dining, and reading, should be thought in individual basis, meaning several table sets are favorable.

Obviously, they ought to be easily movable. Further, diverse combinations in grouping them should be possible.

However, adjustments may not be done instrumentally, people in general were discovered to enjoy such process without any rational reason of doing so. Therefore, it normally happens unconsciously. One famous example is the movable chair celebrated by William H. Whyte in his book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.

Chairs enlarge choice: to move into the sun, out of it, to make room for groups, move away from them. The possibility of choice is as important as the exercise of it. If you know you can

5.

Whyte, W. H. (1980).

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation.

8.6 Sense of openness

Figure 68. Chance Encounter on the Tiber. Experiment inspired by William Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Photo: Marco Martinelli. Retrived from http:// observatory.designobserver. com/slide.html?entry=14758&view=1108&slide=3

Public spaces are featured by their openness. In an essay about the assessment of publicness, visual access is one of the three key qualities of defining physical configuration which serves as one out of five core dimensions of publicness. “Stealthy space” and “slippery space”, meaning places that cannot be found and reached respectively are against the design objective of serving the mass public.5 Similarly, Whyte mentioned the importance of sightline, arguing if people cannot see a place, they simply will not use it, then the place which would be excellent, gets lost.7 As we mentioned before, Riken Yamamoto did his residential projects in respect to the central role of individual who bridges family and society on each sides. The notion is embodied as the dismantling family dwelling into individual rooms and then reuniting them in a urban-like pattern. Sense of openness thus occurs, which increases significantly the sense of publicness in an actually private property.

The project, Hamlet, was designed for hosting a big family composed by four households. Living together like this is quite uncommon nowadays in Japan. Not like the house for old fashioned collective living, which is inward, closed adjacent, and closed to the outside, here you can see how the living units separated and at the same time integrated into certain groups by a complicated circulation system. It

6.

George Varna & Steve Tiesdell (2010): Assessing the Publicness of Public Space:The Star Model of Publicness, Journal of Urban Design, 15:4, 575-598

7.

Whyte, W. H. (1980).

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation.

110 Better Shared House

111

functions as a little city in itself, thus perfectly merges into the surroundings, the extremely dense and diverse central area of Tokyo. Residents are encouraged to lead his or her own life independently, thanks to the detached living units and openness in-between them. Simultaneously, individuals freely form any kind of social groups, conducting some activities somewhere. The place hereby is given a meaning.

Figure 69. Changing of spatial structure in reflect of social change.

Unit a, b, c, d 1. Entrance court; 2. Entrance; 3. Living-dining-kitchen; 4. Private room; 5. Working room; 6. Closet; 7. Salon; 8. Terrace; 9. Outdoor corridor; 10. Bridge; 11. Courtyard; 12. Garage

Figure 70. Drawings of Hamlet. Klauser, W., & Yamamoto, R. (1999). Riken Yamamoto. Basel: Birkhaüser.

Figure 71. Photograph of Hamlet. Ibid.

113

Chapter 9 One Example To show how the principles and strategies work in a concrete way, we will provide an example here.

The building is Via Conte Rosso 36 in Milan. It is the building we are living now. Historically, it was a worker’s apartment built a hundred year ago. Afterwards it was renovated several times in order to meet new needs of residents. For example, before, there were only two public toilets each floor at the both ends of ‘ballatoio’, the long balcony linking every single living units. After renovation, each apartment has their own bathroom.

Today about a third residents in the building are tenants, mainly because of its good location and relatively cheap price. Except us, there are two or three apartments rented for university students.

The space we would like to renovate is shown below, together with the original plan.

Left photo

Example

114 Better Shared House

115

9.1 General strategy Based on previous studie, a general strategy is embodies as a space structure, shown on the right page.

Firstly we defined private areas as integrated living units, owning its utility kit . A large space can be realized by the compression of utilitarian space, thus various activities like meeting with close friends can be conducted in private area.

Extended from individual units, there is a semi private area that locates inside common area, namely a “soft edge”, so that some individual based conversation could be happened in this area. We could imagine those morning greetings in a neighborhood, very loose, but friendly.

The common space is firstly very open, which diminishes the assimilation of a normal family house. Secondly there is multiple centers, realized by different corners shaped by individual units, so different activities can be conducted at the same time without bothering each other.

Kitchen and dining area with cooking facilities serves as the biggest core of common area, that enables relatively big community activities like birthday party.

utility kit (sanitary+storage+bed) individual cell individual area in common space cooking facility

common area

Walls are redefined according to the new use. Four rooms are created, with three single rooms and one double room. Each room has their own sanitary facilities, while the kitchen is the only shared functional space.

The common spaces as a whole is quite open,Modified since the entrance is trasparent and the material of the corridor is brought in. But it is subdivided inside into several sub-spaces, not by solid walls but by different corners of individual rooms, which allows different activities happened at the same time.

10.6 m2

Modified

13.2 m2

0

After

9.2 m2

A 10.6 m2

A

Previously it was two properties located at the end of the corridor, with each one around 40 square meters. The middle small room was a storage.

Now we try to combine the two properties with the room in-between, and make a shared house for five persons by following strategies we provided in the previous chapter.

Rather than optimise the project, we show what should we do at least for a better shared house.

B

Modification

B

116  Better Shared House

10.6 m2

9.2 m2

1

2

5

10.6 m2

13.2 m2

0

1

2

5

Section AA

Section BB

120 Better Shared House

121

9.2 My Place: Enhanced sense of control The place where an individual can fully retreat from public is called My Place. In this design, My Place is conducted in only three steps. And we think, it is so convenience in any other site.

Well insulated Firstly we need to establish the boundary, by which the wall inner space need to be well insulated from sight and sound.

It ensures a fully retreat from the others as the basis of My bed Place.

Secondly each room has a compressed “utility kit”, storage including toilet, shower, wardrobe and a loft space for wc sleeping. It satisfies the integrity of a home-like room and Compact utility kit also released Spaciousness a large space for various other activities that cannot be conducted in a normal bedroom.

Lastly, by elevating 10cm of the floor and partly strech it out to form a “door yard”, we can increase the sense of territoriality. In this way, some individual based communiDooryard ty life, like talking with someone “in front of my door”, is encouraged. (See “soft edge” on page 131.)

Well insulated wall

bed

storage

wc Compact utility kit

Spaciousness Nice Place!

Dooryard

...

sleeping

storage

wc

Compact utility kit

living

Dooryard

Flexible Interior 122 Better Shared House

123

Surveillance

Private Sanitary Facilities 124  Better Shared House

 125

126  Better Shared House

9.3 Our Place: Heuristic setting for cooperation In the common area, there is no any space only dedicated to transportation. By controlling the dimension of the common area, multiple centers are created, thus different activities could happen at the same time.

The entrance is transparent, while the material of the corridor is brought in. In this way the home-like feeling is diminished and flatmates would be more into a cooperation status like in a public space, rather than relax oneself without empathy to the others.

In this way, the common space is not a independent space but a space composed by small areas expanded from several My Places, which is fully under control by the community.

 127

Spatial diversity

Soft edge Flexible furniture

Cooking and dining Sense of openness

Cooking and dining 130 Better Shared House

Soft edge 131

Spatial diversity

Flexible Furniture 134 Better Shared House

135

Sense of Openness

136 Better Shared House

137 Whyte, W. H. (1980). The social life of small urban spaces. Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation.

References

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George Varna & Steve Tiesdell (2010): Assessing the Publicness of Public Space:The Star Model of Publicness, Journal of Urban Design, 15:4, 575-598 Gifford, R. (2007). Environmental psychology: Principles and practice. Optimal Books.

Institut für Kreative Nachhaltigkeit (Berlin). (2012). Cohousing cultures: Handbuch für selbstorganisiertes, gemeinschaftliches und nachhaltiges Wohnen = Cohousing cultures : handbook for self-organized, community-oriented and sustainable housing.

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