Breaking Up With The Double Loaded Corridor: A Study of Progressive Housing Design

BREAKING

UP WITH

THE DOUBLE

LOADED

CORRIDOR

A STUDY OF PROGRESSIVE HOUSING DESIGN & IT’S INFLUENCE ON

SOCIAL NETWORKS

BY FRANK ZIMMERMAN

BREAKING

UP WITH

THE DOUBLE

LOADED

CORRIDOR

A STUDY OF PROGRESSIVE HOUSING DESIGN AND IT’S INFLUENCE

ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

BY FRANK ZIMMERMAN

Abstract

Over the past half a century, as towers for human dwelling have grown taller; limited

thought has been spared to the space that connects private units to public streets.

Tower development has fixated wholly on Efficiency: How to maximize the percentage

of rentable area.

In a similar fashion to how sustainability concerns have drastically shifted tower

designs, so too social concerns are in the process of doing the same. People are

coming to expect more from their buildings than lifeless elevators and endless

corridors that connect their homes to the city. And architects are beginning to

respond by building places that nurture community by providing natural avenues for

socialization.

Following new research in Germany and Denmark, this paper will explore ways

that community enabling design can permeate into mid and high rise residential

architecture. On three scales [macro, micro, and human] this research will delve into

potential design solutions that can make social space.

TEXT - GRAPHICS - PHOTOS

CREATED BY FRANK ZIMMERMAN

01 | CURRENT CONDITIONS

TOOLKIT

MACRO

INWARD FOCUS | PAGE 22

OUTWARD FOCUS | PAGE 28

HUMAN

INTERMEDIATE SPACES |PAGE 52

BALCONY AS CONNECTOR |PAGE 56

SAVE THE BEST FOR THE PUBLIC | PAGE 59

6

BREAKING UP WITH THE DOUBLE LOADED CORRIDOR

MICRO

TIE PRIVATE AND PUBLIC | PAGE 38

VISUAL CLUSTERING | PAGE 41

BOOKEND ACTIVITY CENTERS | PAGE 44

SUBDIVIDE LARGE STRUCTURES | PAGE 47

STRUCTURAL FLEXABILITY | PAGE 49

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01

Life in the Corridor

In dense environments across much of America, urban homes are stacked

and tied together by a framework of systems that meet specific functions within tight

efficiency requirements. These internal systems allow for humans to make their way

from the public street to their dwellings, often hundreds of feet off the ground with

ease and comfort. They also allow for mail to be delivered, trash to be removed,

and water, air and electricity to service each home. And in all but a few examples,

these functions are gauged by their built efficiency: what arrangement allows for the

maximum amount of rentable area with the minimum amount of supporting space. In

other words, how can a building make apartments as large as possible while meeting

the minimum code and engineering standards to support their occupancy.

To meet these ends, the connective tissue to access American urban dwellings

has leaned heavily on the implementation of the double-loaded corridor. While not

initially recognizable by name, the double-loaded corridor is spatially ubiquitous.

Uniformly 5 feet wide with two rows of 26-30 foot deep dwellings flanking each side,

these arrangements maintain a uniform height, material, and direction. Their often

lengthy procession is centered on an elevator core and capped by 2 egress stairs; a

case study in anti-human engineering.

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THE DOUBLE LOADED CORRIDOR

9


PARKED CAR DIMENSIONS DICTATE HOME LAYOUT

While the corridor design is partially influenced by development canon and

conservative calculations, it is predominantly shaped by the demands of car storage.

The typical parking space is 9 feet wide and 18 feet deep. When these parking

spaces are arranged in two efficient rows they border a 24-26 foot aisle, assigned to

move automobiles in and out of parking spaces. In total, 60-65 feet is the floor plate

depth required to accommodate two rows of idle cars. It is this dimension that rises

up the building and is repeated to fit the completely unrelated demands of human

10


occupation. When we warn our children to not let their possessions define who they

are, we ignore that our cars already dictate all of our daily movements.

The rigid efficiency of the double-loaded corridor has effectively squeezed out

the unexpected, the human. Most mid and high rise designs dictate that residents

will enter the lobby from the street. Depending on the occupant’s means, the lobby’s

surfaces range from spartan to opulent finishes [plastic laminates to elegant stones];

but the space is, with rare exception, are programmatically focused on human

movement. Any architectural features that encouraging human delay falls beyond the

design scope.

Because of the alienating nature of the contemporary building entrance, the

upper echelon of buildings employ stewards of the space, lobby attendants, to police

the “no-man’s land.” The design of the lobby space is replicated over and over to

signal humans to stay away from their home’s front door. Thus, someone has to be

11


hired to care for the vacuum that is left behind; a Band-Aid used over and over to deal

with a failed architectural trope.

In next step across a building’s connective tissue, the resident or visitor

reaches the elevator; the single most important instrument in allowing urban

structures to grow above the 6th floor. The 7 by 5 foot box rises vertically to connect

a range of mobility types between the lobby and upper levels at the fastest possible

speed. It is here that the only human interaction occurs in the typical residential tower.

It is a common interaction repeated over and over in films across genres: a short,

unexpected conversation with a stranger that is cut short by the carriage’s opening

doors. The social norms in the elevator are so pervasive that there are strict physical

norms by which to abide: humans are expected to enter as far into the elevator

carriage as possible then turn to face the door.

It is in the elevator, the rare community held space in contemporary mid and

high-rise buildings, that residents are given a minute to meet their neighbors. While

this “common space” provides a limited social good, it also creates one of the most

challenging barriers to building social ties within high density housing. How can two

strangers meet when a metal box conceals and ferry’s them from the street to their

homes in under a minute? And why do these few interactions not flow into the corridor

or prescribed amenity spaces? This is the question this paper will attempt to answer.

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13


02

A Case For The Social

While the alienating qualities of our current double-loaded housing stock is

evident, we should address the importance of social interactions and why our homes

should play a role in cultivating instead of baring its maturation. Socialization’s

central role in individual health and human evolution is why in the U.N.’s 2005 World

Summit the 193 partner nations agreed on “social development” as one of the three

components of sustainability. 1

Individual Needs

Humans depend on socialization for their physical and emotional wellbeing.

As far back as Aristotle who stated in Politics: “Man is by nature a social animal…

Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to

need to….is either a beast or a god” 2 humans have recognized the importance of

their connection. More recently, psychologists and neuroscientists such as Matthew

Lieberman, author of Social: Why our Brains Are Wired to Connect, have found that

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COURTYARD | KASTANIENALLEE 85

15


“Social connections are as important to our survival and flourishing as the need for

food, safety, and shelter.” 3

If our homes have been tuned over time best meet our needs for food, safety,

and shelter; why have these buildings done so little to meet our social needs? From

what we now know, without resorting to hyperbole, this lack of attention stands to

dramatically constrain human evolution.

Society Needs

Society depend on high rates of socialization for its existence. Writing on the

importance of human connection, physicist Leonard Mlodiow wrote:

COMMUNITY DINNER | COOP HOUSING RIVER SPEEFELD

16


COMMUNITY LIVING SPACE | COOP HOUSING RIVER SPEEFELD

“When we think about the difference between human and monkey we usually

assume what distinguishes us is our I.Q. But instead our social IQ is the

principal quality that differentiates us from other animals” 4

While humans are individually capable, it is their ability to communicate and

build on each other’s ideas that has made us survive and become the dominant

force in our ecosystem. It is how the invention of the simple integrated circuit in 1959

rapidly lead, in just 60 years, to the digitally integrated society in which we now live.

17


Our individual efforts are exponentially multiplied through social connection.

Our ability to communicate with and process as a collective is what allows

us to grow and evolve to meet our circumstance. Similar to an individual’s brain, the

growth and diversity of social connections across society and the amount of each

connection’s use will advance our collective intelligence. As our collective rate of

connection declines, so does our societal framework and progress.

Social in Decline

The challenge that we have been facing in America in the last 50 years, as first

observed by political scientist and author Robert Putnam, are declining rates of “social

COMMUNITY LIVING SPACE | COOP HOUSING RIVER SPEEFELD

18


PEDESTRIAN PATH |UFAFABRIK

capital” and “civic engagement”. Putnam famously referred to this trend as “bowling

alone.” 5 And while a portion of these communities have shifted to other formats,

including to the Internet, there is still a shortfall that needs to be better met. One way

to absorb a part of this shortfall is to make homes that bring us together.

Architecture’s Role

Architecture touches every minute of every day of our life. Architecture critic and

author Sarah Goldhagen, with the help of decades of cognitive research, argues in her

recent book, “Welcome to Your World: How the Build Environment Shapes Our Lives.”

that the sweeping influence that architecture has on humans bestows designers with

an immense power. 6 Just as the buildings we design have a role in heightening social

19


isolation, so too they can play role in repairing and building new social ties. And just

such an example has played out before in the transformation of our public spaces.

Since the late 1960’s theorists and designers including Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl,

and William H. Whyte have recognized the essential role that urban public space has

in building a socially prosperous community. Through a data focused analysis they

proved that public spaces could be designed to incubate human interaction. Gehl and

Whyte examined a wide range of parameters to determine what design elements most

often attract human use and lobbied for their implementation. It was these metrics

that led the New York City Planning commission to transform how it approved privately

owned public space; a guideline that is still maturing. 7

A similar moment is needed in our homes. Architects and designers need to

analyze and quantify the benefits that come from interior, socially constructive spaces.

Then, when confronted with empirical evidence, owners, occupants, and public

officials can better understand the value in social design. In a similar fashion to how

The United States Green Building Council’s LEED Certification transformed how the

building community thought about sustainability, a social metric can change what we

value in multi-family architecture.

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03

Macro Scale Interventions

Just as in public spaces, educated design choices can cultivate human

interaction and build community in mid and high-rise housing. Using built examples

from Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and the United States; the following design

guide outlines potential solutions on three scales; macro, micro, and human to give

designers a range of options when creating community focused living environments.

The architectural solutions outlined below have been amassed through observation,

research, and interviews; future measured analysis is needed to conclusively validate

their effectiveness.

Cophahagen – Inward Focus

I met Anton over a community meal at his home, Ibsgaarden. Ibsgaarden

shares 6 dinners a week, with a break on Mondays, by splitting cooking obligations

among its 30 adult members. Anton, 17, approached my table after dinner and

immediately wanted to know what I thought of his unconventional home. His

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COPENHAGEN HOUSING

23


COMMUNITY HOUSE | IBSGAARDEN

unencumbered honestly and gregarious nature struck me as a young man with

a social acuity beyond his years. He had just returned from his first semester at

university in Copenhagen. It was the longest he had been away from Ibsgaarden since

he could remember and he remarked how strange it felt. Making new friends and

operating in a much more individual-focused city had made him nostalgic for his life

when daily tasks where performed as a community and his best friends where always

a flight of stairs away. Growing up in Ibsgaarden had shaped how he saw himself,

which moving to university had thrown into stark relief, as a member of a tribe with the

evolved social tools to excel within its parameters.

Established in 1983, Ibsgaarden was built on the grounds of a farm in

Roskilde, Denmark. The residences for its 40 community members where constructed

in as a 2 story apartment block that form a tight “U” around an existing farm house.

The lower units are accessed from the central community green space while the upper

units from exterior stairs that spilled out into the same area. The farm house, updated

24


COPENHAGEN HOUSING

25


multiple times over the course of Ibsgaarden’s history, was renovated to support all of

the community spaces. It contained a library, child and teenage play rooms, laundry

and woodworking space, and the kitchen and dining room. On the rear side of the

common house, lesser used spaces such as the community garden and laundry drying

area rounded out the enclave’s perimeter.

When entering Ibsgaarden for the first time, visitors are struck by how all of the

homes shy away from the street. The only away to enter the 20 unit complex is through

a single breach on the parking lot side of the community’s shell. Its design has social

roots. As residents make the trip between their homes and cars, they follow the same

route as their neighbors and are spatially more likely to make informal connections.

Beyond informal interactions this inward focus with limited route options encourages

a range of beneficial social habits such as a feeling of common ownership, communal

parenting and improved security outcomes. 8

COURTYARD | IBSGAARDEN

26


INWARD FACING | IBSGAARDEN

27


STAGGERED HOMES | ABSALON’S HAVE

In hand with a well maintained community structure, Ibsgaarden has been

able to sustain six common meals a week along with an array of social benefits

because the architecture physically reinforces their social glue every minute of every

day. But, there is a danger that such a walled in site with a flourishing community will

lose prospective of the broader neighborhood. As Anton put it, “when I was younger

my teachers worried about me not having friends at school. But that was because I

didn’t take the time to bond with other kids outside of Ibsgaarden until I was older.” 9

His focus inward caused him to lose out on social activity elsewhere. While this is a

challenge, when kept in check, it is a small price to pay for a socially vibrant home.

BERLIN – OUTWARD FOCUS

Born and educated in the United States, Dr. Michael LaFond is a community

developer in Berlin who specializes in creating and nurturing community focused

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BERLIN HOUSING

29


housing projects. I met Michael on cold Saturday morning at the grounds of his first

introduction into community based housing in the 1980s, ufaFabrik. What began

as an informal squat on the grounds of an abandoned film studio in the late 70’s,

ufaFabrik had expanded into an intentional community with a bakery, theatre, and

neighborhood center by the time Michael arrived.

Given his status as an outside researcher, Michael lived in a trailer on the

grounds for years to study the key elements that enable an intentional community

to flourish. And at the conclusion of his research, with an ambition to build his own,

formalized, cohousing community, he moved on in 2002 and founded Coop Housing at

River Spreefeld. His meticulous research had paid off.

Coop Housing at River Spreefeld is cohousing on an uncommonly large

scale. Build on the banks of the Spree River, less than a mile from Alexanderplatz

RIVER FRONTAGE | COOP HOUSING RIVER SPEEFELD

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BERLIN HOUSING

31


COURTYARD | COOP HOUSING RIVER SPEEFELD

and on the border between East and West Berlin, the coop is home to 150 residents

spread across 3 buildings. The living spaces are raised so that spaces to serve the

neighborhood could occupy the ground level. Such ammentities include an event and

catering room, dance studio, day care, fabrication shop, and office spaces for 70+

workers. The landscaping and architecture is placed to encourage those from outside

the community wander in and make their way to the riverfront. While the community

is a self-organized, formal cooperative, its roots are not far from Teepee Land, a

neighboring squatting community to which it lends infrastructural and civic support.

In its short history, the squatting movement has had a profound impact on

Berlin’s housing environment. On both sides of the Berlin Wall in the 1960s and

1970s, housing shortages and government renewal practices that emphasized

tenement eviction led to a surge in illegal squats. Squatting in the city “came to

represent both a struggle against housing precarity as well as a series of practices

aimed at building a different type of city.” 10 Individuals whom illegally took control of

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OUTWARD FACING | COOP HOUSING RIVER SPEEFELD

33


abandoned structures build communities and began piecemeal renovations to make

substandard buildings, habitable. This process also set into motion the unceasing “tug

of war” between the interests of these newly formed communities and those of city

officials.

The two key factors that ensured a squat’s long term survival in the face of

growing development markets was 1) its value as a community asset and 2)its ability

to encourage other squatter to take up residence in neighboring buildings. In Berlin,

successful squats such as ufaFabrik and Kastanienallee 85 early on built community

centers, cafes, libraries, and theatres to serve the neighborhood. They enshrined

themselves as community goods worth protecting even in the face of growing market

pressures. And, when the time came, local community groups and politicians did just

that.

But for short term protection, Berlin squatters depended on strength in

numbers. Squatter communities depended on establishing a positive outside face in

order to attract others to occupy neighboring buildings. As squatting evictions swept

through Berlin, on the tails of rising property values, politicians and police tended

to act more on small scale squats, avoiding large-scale, high publicity community

evictions. It is these two traits that still resonate in Berlin’s co-housing DNA.

On a macro scale, Berlin’s cohousing architecture is sited in diametric

opposition to Denmark’s typical form. Their housing is focused outward, with a

community face that is open and inviting to the general public. Ground levels with

ample space encourage people to walk around them and those on limited sites open

wide front doors for the public to move inside. These spaces are actively programed

and sun filled with elongated vistas. These indicators mixed with signage and

commerce signal to those entering that this is a space for all to enjoy, a community

good.

From an overall social organization, inward and outward social focus has

benefits and drawbacks. Inwardly focused communities nurture tight relationships

that can lead to an overly sequestered mindset when taken to the extreme. While

outwardly focused housing can sacrifice the social vibrancy of residents in favor of

benefiting the broader public. Before designing a home, it is important to first stake

out the role a community will play in this macro vision.

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04

Micro Scale Interventions

Once the overall social vision for a community is considered, a step smaller

architectural considerations can be taken into account to make socially vibrant

housing. These “micro” design gestures work to encourage both formal and informal

social interaction to germinate within community focused organizations. In contrast to

the macro section, these theoretical solutions can be swapped and combined to meet

the intended result.

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WALKING PATH | ABSALON’S HAVE

37


TIE PRIVATE AND PUBLIC | LANGE ENG

TIE PRIVATE AND PUBLIC

Designed by high profile Danish architect Dorte Mandrup, Lange Eng

is a rectilinear-donut shaped cohousing community located on the outskirts of

Copenhagen. The donut is kinked and elongated North to South with entrances to

the central courtyard limited to those two sides. A majority of the communitie’s 210

residents live on the taller, two level west side where units range from 750 SF to

1,200 SF On the opposite twin level, townhouse style units fill up the row at around

38


DUPLEX UNITS | LANGE ENG

1,400 SF each. While the units vary to attract different family arrangements, they all

connect with the central green through broad windows.

In a similar fashion to Ibsgaarden, as one enters the court they pass a torched

wood cladding with narrow widows to the outside into a middle that is wrapped with

open translucent polycarbonate. The large interior facing fenestration from each unit

mixed with the translucent façade system makes intruders feel as though they are

surrounded by a crowd of spectators. This arrangement of public and private through

space and visibility is finely tuned to not only clearly demarcate public and private, but

also accomplishes a long list of social goals.

This architectural choreography begins in each unit’s kitchen. The homes are

arranged so that the most used spaces in the house, the kitchen and living rooms,

are given unimpeded views to the central lawn; while the home’s most private spaces,

bedrooms, are hidden on the outside of the donut where the windows are most

narrow. This layout encourages residents to shift their gaze outside all while they

accomplish life’s daily tasks. Cooking, eating, socializing, even viewing television all

encourage the community to collectively watch out for one another, and their children,

39


without making a conscious effort. And on the other side of the glass, Lange Eng’s

children feel as though they are performing in an amphitheater.

In the balancing act of encouraging neighbors to interact, architects must also

protect resident’s private lives. In addition to moving the private spaces to the back

of the home, Lang Eng’s designers buffered each home with a private deck and a

substantial planters to further demarcate semi-private and private areas. Community

members feel as though they have control of their homes and also know how far to

keep away to respect other’s privacy.

While it is important to balance community connection with privacy concerns,

in most western nations, privacy almost always drowns out any social benefits. Tall

fences are preferred to collectively policed green spaces. This imbalance is one of the

most persistent battles that designers face as socially conscious spaces become more

prevalent.

COMMUNITY DINING ROOM| LANGE ENG

40


VISUAL CLUSTERING | TIETGEN DORMITORY

VISUAL CLUSTERING

In major cities across the world, as incomes rise, amenity laden buildings have

soared in popularity. Gyms, libraries, roof decks, and pools are some of the many

and varied frills that upper end homes employ to attract tenants. But, what is quickly

apparent, that that these “public” spaces do not build community, or even attract

users, through their mere existence. But, instead, these amenity spaces need to work

in concert with the building’s pedestrian traffic flows and with one another. Why does

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THE COMMUNITY LEVEL | TIETGEN DORMITORY

a smaller common room attract more use when it is on the ground floor over a larger

basement level space? Why do the addition of laundry and mail facilities to other

amenity spaces bring strangers together? This section and the next - “Bookend Activity

Centers” - will attempt to answer these questions.

The Tietgen Dormitory at Copenhagen University is laid out in a perfect

circle with the middle removed to accommodate an interior courtyard. Its architects,

Lundgaard & Tranberg divided the building into 5 parts using stair and elevator

columns. The dormitory is further subdivided by balconies and common rooms that

inset and protrude from the building face. Finally, the 360 dorm rooms are lifted into

the air and placed on a transparent podium with regular openings to the courtyard.

Contained in this glass podium is a vast array of student oriented programing

that overlaps and interacts with few, if any, floor-to-ceiling divider walls. In one ground

floor zone, post office boxes line up next to laundry machines; which both border

the game room and gym space. Entertainment spaces border music practice rooms.

Design studios bleed into group study spaces while administrative offices share a

kitchen area. While some of these program overlaps are designed so spaces are used

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all day; i.e. people practice music during the day and then party at night, but other

programmatic clustering moves excel at multiplying social interaction.

In the Tietgen Dormitory, when a student goes to pick-up his mail, it is likely

he will run into a familiar face doing laundry or watching a sporting event on the

television. When the student lingers to briefly talk, so too the chance of someone

going to the gym will recognize a friend. The social impact of these dormitory spaces

is infectious and it has a multiplying effect that resonates across the building’s

community.

I refer to this architectural arrangement of differing but compatible programing

as “visual clustering.” Give users a range of different reasons to use a space and

then situate them in visual proximity so their chances of interaction are heighted. A

single use mail room in the back of a building will only attract users for a brief moment

once a day and never give them an excuse to linger. It is the lack of excuse to linger

that even in the heat of an animated conversation, everyone leaves the elevator

immediately when it reaches their floor. But in a programmatically overlapping space,

community members can come for their mail and end up participating in a completely

divergent activity.

While visual clustering is an effective tool for fostering informal socialization,

it often requires wide floor plates to accommodate a spectrum of programs in close

proximity. This spatial limitation leads to an alternative tool for social magnetism: the

bookending of activity centers.

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BOOKEND ACTIVITY CENTERS | IBSGAARDEN

BOOKEND ACTIVITY CENTERS

As discussed at the beginning of this paper, occupants in a majority of mid

and high-rise housing across the world follow the same linear path multiple times a

day: from the street, to the lobby, through the elevator, down a double loaded corridor,

and into their homes. Ibsgaarden’s architecture dictates an equally restrictive path,

but achieves dramatically more lucrative social outcomes. And while the path of path

of travel within Ibsgaarden’s belt may operate on a horizontal plane; its spatially

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COMMUNITY ENTRANCE | IBSGAARDEN

restricted application makes it a ripe test case for vertical housing application.

When Isbgaarden was constructed in the early 1980s, the farm house

they build around was decidedly rural. Today the outskirts of Roskilde have shifted

suburban and community residents depend on personal autos for mobility. In this

environment, the parking lot is point from which all residents must enter and exit

the community, often multiple times a day. The parking lot is a principal space, one

bookended in a line of travel that the community members activity utilize. All of

the resident’s parking has been consolidated into one lot which is uncommon for

suburban lots where people are more often able to park immediately next to their front

door. This exceptional concentration of activity is what makes it a principal space.

On the other end of the “bookend” is Ibsgaard’s common dining room and

kitchen. This dining room is a second story space with large dormers that fill the

room with light. The open kitchen flows unimpeded into eating area. In this room,

community members enjoy 6 dinners a week that are prepared on a rotating calendar

with their neighbors. This eating space is the heart of Ibsgaarden’s social life as it is

with most cohousing communities. 11 It is the second principal destination.

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In-between the parking lot and the dining room is a row of auxiliary common

spaces that are socially activated because of their positioning on the line of travel.

When a resident arrives home at night, they park their car and walk in through the

front gate, the community’s only entrance. From there they walk through the main

court where they pass children playing in the sand box and their friends having

wine on the porch. After sharing a drink with their friends, they make their way into

the common house where they pass through the library and pause to speak with a

committee planning a birthday party. Then past the library they walk by the childrens’

and teens’ respective spaces and check in with their children. Finally, at the end

of eyeing over their child’s report card, one climbs the stairs to the dining room for

dinner.

The path of travel dictates that community members will pass through 4

ancillary spaces when making their way between principal end points. While principal

spaces will always be activated, it is the arrangement of travel that dictates how much,

if ever, more whimsical, ancillary spaces will be used. In my experience observing

both community and non-community focused housing; is often the lack of visual

clustering or bookended activity centers, regardless of the programming, that dooms

a public space to obsolescence. And with amenities growing more common in affluent

buildings, their organization should take a paramount role in architectural solutions.

DINING ROOM | IBSGAARDEN

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SUBDIVIDE LARGE STRUCTURES | TOWER IN ANTWERP

SUBDIVIDE LARGE STRUCTURES

On a bright Friday afternoon in October I found myself wandering

Copenhagen’s port with Lone Wiggers, partner in charge of C.F. Moller’s new tower in

Antwerp, Belgium, condemning the undersized role that the social has played in the

discussion of sustainability. It is from that frustration that Lone and her team entered

and won a competition in 2014 to build a 24 story tower that “redefines the multistory

block as a social, vertical community.” 12 To make vertical life just as lively and

diverse as the city’s most active streets.

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INNER CIRCLE | TIETGEN DORMITORY

One of the key impediments to building community in a tower, as Lone pointed

out, was the oversized scale that they come in. How can neighbors build a collective

trust when there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of them? Their solution:

“the vertical village.” The vertical village is a 1 to 3 story block of apartments that vary

in size and share a common external and internal identity within the larger Antwerp

Tower. On the exterior face of the building these villages are demarcated by fiber

cement fins and offset balconies. On the interior they are organized through multiple

entry points and visual identifiers. These architectural gestures more concretely

defines whom “holds claim” to a previously undefined space. 13

While the specific architectural techniques required to subdivide large dwelling

towers is beyond the scope of this paper, it is essential to address the need to break

these places down into manageable communities. American cohousing pioneers

Kathry McCamant and Charles Durrett place the idea community size at 20-50 adults.

From their research they advise communities should be big enough so that “every

member has 4-5 people they really connect with,” and not so big that individual’s

lose accountably to the group as a whole. 14 Only when housing groups reach a

manageable membership can trust and all of its associated benefits take root.

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BLOCK MASSING PUNCTUATED BY SOCIAL COLUMNS|KURFÜRSTENSTR. 142

STRUCTURAL FLEXABILIY

When a young person moves into their first apartment it is assumed that he or

she will move into new, larger units as they change marital status and decide to have

children. Conversely as those children move out of the home, it is expected that empty

nesters will downsize, move to a smaller unit. In dense urban areas, an apartment,

on its own is seen as an inelastic good. We thus have come to depend on the diversity

of the real estate market to deal with the elastic nature of life. But all of this moving

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leaves a heavy burden for individuals and communities to bare. Consequently, when

facing the emotional weight of leaving a community and life behind, many individuals

choose to remain in place, with homes that are too small or too large to effectively

meet their needs.

This mismatch between home size and resident’s need is especially acute

in Berlin cohousing communities where demand far exceeds supply. With this

issue in mind, June14 Meyer-Grohbrügge & Chermayeff Architects and their clients

Building Group Kurfürstenstraße built flexibility into each apartment. Conceived as

6 overlapping mid-rise blocks that mirror each overlap into the apartment units.

The result is that each apartment “shares” a portion of their apartment with their

neighbors’ unit. As life circumstances change for members of the building group,

neighbors can flexibility recalibrate their unit size according to need.

In Kurfürstenstr. 142, creative planning and concrete construction has made

it so life changes do not require communities to break, but instead it allows them

equitably age in place. And longer term community stability is not the only benefit that

this gained from this foresighted design, the act of sharing one’s home can strengthen

ties and opens the door to a more diverse community.

These benefits where brought to life by my host at Ibsgaarden, Jesper Holck.

As his cohousing community was aging there was an acute mismatch between the

demand of young families and the number of units in the community large enough to

house them. In response, Jesper came to an arrangement with his neighbors to shift

his apartment wall so they could annex his surplus bedroom. This structural flexibility,

and the good-spirited flexibly of community members, allowed the community to

attract a new young family and build on its collective trust.

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“SHARED” SPACE ALLOWS FOR FLEXIBLE APARTMENT ARRANGEMENTS|KURFÜRSTENSTR. 142

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05

Human Scale Interventions

INTERMEDIATE SPACES

As you exit the front door of your apartment, stepping across the threshold

of the swung in door, you are immediately dropped into the corridor. Within a stretch

of 2-4 inches, you transition from the privacy of your home and are dropped into to

the public realm. This is the experience shared by almost all people who call a mid

or high rise building home. Compare this experience to the exceedingly more gradual

progression from private to public realms in a detached home in one of America’s

streetcar suburbs. As you exit the home, residents cross their porch over a few strides,

then down a series of steps, across a patch of lawn or walkway and it is then when one

reaches the sidewalk. The transitional realm between private and public is stretched

from 2 inches to 25 and even 50 feet.

The value of this intermediate realm has been extolled by public realm

theorists from Jane Jacobs and Oscar Newman. More recently, American Cohousing

gurus’ Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett point out the importance this semipublic

space plays in everyday interactions. In this zone neighbors can wait for doors

to be answered, can sit and watch the world, or greet one another without breaking

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CIRCULATION | TIETGEN DORMITORY

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INTERMEDIATE SPACES | A-52

social codes of privacy. This often un-programmed space operates in many ways

like an elevator, but without a one minute time limitation. Instead people can share

a quick greeting or linger in longer conversation, without the looming pressures of

the lift reaching its destination. It is why in this realm, McCamant and Durrett place

particular emphasis on the design of front porches [to be no less than 6’ 06” in depth]

in their community designs. 15

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STAIR LANDING |COOP HOUSING RIVER SPEEFELD

Scaling down and implementing these spaces into multi-family housing

can have an outsized impact. Creating small insets around doorways or around a

collection of doorways at the end of hallways is a straight forward way to create semiprivate

space. Further uses of furniture and markings at the periphery of the hallway’s

path of travel can create porch-like realms and feelings of community ownership of the

corridor. Newman extolled the benefits of these spaces, saying they provide “feelings

of identity and control.” 16 While these moves come at the expense of maximizing

building efficiency and rentable square footage (infringing into the corridor is banned

practice in most NYC condos and cooperatives), they offer the promise of radically

reshaping the hallway environment.

At A-52, a 7 floor building group near the center of Berlin, architects Christoph

Roedig and Ulrich Schop strategically widened stair landings at apartment entries.

These intermediate spaces left room for neighbors to share. Some landings were

outfitted with seating, others with a common book shelf, and others left bare for

people in motion to pause and connect. This limited added space transformed a

utilitarian stair into a public amenity, scaled not for formal events but for unexpected

moments.

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BALCONY AS CONNECTOR | R-50 & TOWER IN ANTWERP

BALCONY AS CONNECTOR

As Michael LaFond led a group of cohousing enthusiasts around the

community of Spreefeld, I found myself in a conversation dissecting balconies with

a young English architect named Thomas. Thomas, whom practices in London,

described one of his early projects in which he attempted to persuade the developer

for whom he worked to construct open, shared balconies between apartment units.

While his suggestion fell beyond his client’s comfort zone, he was able to find a middle

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CONTINUOUS BALCONY | R-50

ground in which the building ended up with balcony dividers that could be easily

removed by tenants who where open to sharing space. Thomas theorized that as

neighbors got to know one another and they let down emotional boundaries, so too

would their physical boundaries, in this case the balcony separators, also fall.

As Thomas reported to me in November, his prediction far exceeded his own

expectations. When he visited he community a year after move in, most neighboring

units had replaced the dividers with grills, tables, and open space. While tenants are

reasonably afraid of a stranger sharing the space right outside their apartment, once

that person becomes an acquaintance or a friend, that fear is able to melt away.

Common outdoor space remains one of the greatest challenges to urban,

multi-family housing. With the exception of roof decks, which we will discuss next,

homes with space to see the sky are rare in America’s densest environments. This

is because land is scarce and economic as well as government realities make the

creation of rentable square footage the highest priority. But balconies seem to be an

undercapitalized resource for social focused housing. They are public space that can

be inexpensively built and maintained. Requiring only a railing and no mechanical

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systems, balconies can serve as interstitial space, fill program, or serve as landmarks.

Enter R-50, a Berlin Building Group, who circle all 6 floors of their community

with narrow, continuous balconies made from galvanized steel panels and mesh.

These “exterior corridors” provide a new route for children to travel between homes

and members to share planters, tools, or simply an evening drink. 17

The outer webs of R-50 create new, unforeseen, networks for community

interaction on each building floor. These connections are multiplied when applied

in the “vertical villages” planned for C.F. Moller’s Antwerp Tower. In this example,

as discussed earlier, offset community balconies are positioned so occupants are

able to connect with neighboring apartments above and below. Similar to the visual

connections made across fences found in suburban communities across America,

the Antwerp tower turns this relationship vertically. The balconies design creates an

avenue for neighbors to say hello, catch up, and potentially make plans for later. At the

moment, the use of balconies as a social tool is a largely untapped resource.

BALCONY RELATIONS | TIETGEN DORMITORY

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SAVE THE BEST FOR THE PUBLIC | A-52

SAVE THE BEST FOR THE PUBLIC

The tale of two Berlin common areas: The first Kastanienallee 85’s common

bar, theatre, and children’s game room that is located in a roughly dug and patched

basement. The low ceilings, maze like organization, and damp air make for an eerie

scene when vacant. The second common area is located on the top floor of Roedig.

Schop Architekten’s Baugruppe A52. The light-filled space features a small kitchen

and guest bed that opens, through a glass sliding door onto a 7th floor roof deck. If

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presented with the choice of which space you would choose to occupy, it would be

challenging to find a resident whom prefers the former.

While it is hard to criticize Kastanienallee 85 commons space given its

squatting / adaptive reuse beginnings, it is not difficult to celebrate Baugruppe A52

for its foresight in leaving the most desirable space for the community to share. In

Berlin, like many cities, the farther a unit is from the bustling street [and closer to

light and air], the more valuable it is. Thus a 7th floor apartment minutes from the

center of Berlin would carry a high price tag. In the face of these economic realities

the architects and the building group chose to locate a room in which they could

accommodate visiting guests [allowing their individual apartments to be a little

smaller] and a scenic terrace for them to gather. They valued activated public space,

so they located the common area where people would use it. And the community has

thus thrived in the space.

This final micro-solution can also be seen as the most obvious. By definition

the most desirable space in a building is where people want to be. So for common

space to meet its most active potential that is where you must locate a community’s

heart.

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06

Looking Forward

LOOKING FORWARD

In 1998, Bhutan’s prime minister introduced the “gross national happiness.”

(GNH) index to the United Nations. It was a revolutionary idea that, while a rudimentary

metric at the time, caught the world’s attention as a possible supplement to the gross

domestic product (GDP) as a gauge for a population’s wellbeing. GNH made waves

in the west because it separated capital accumulation from emotional health and

it placed an observable metric behind what was once thought of as an ephemeral

quality. 18 In much the same way that the United States Green Building Council’s LEED

certification quantified a building’s sustainability, so too did the GNH for emotional

wellbeing.

For tools for social fertilization to gain widespread traction, architects must

engage with social scientist and be able to numerically quantify spaces with high

levels of social activity output. Once a social benefit is quantified, then developers and

consumers will be able to account for any added cost. This careful study and numeric

presentation has led to the creation of countless beloved public spaces across the

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world, so too can this model transform where we live.

In an attempt to spur further research, this paper has outlined a series of

socially incubating architectural tools for mid and high rise housing. The tools operate

on a range of scales [macro, micro, and human] and at differing price points. These

design strategies are, for the most part, theories base on field study and related

research. Further quantitative analysis is required to confirm a list of concrete tools. It

is my hope that an adventurous research team will go further to field test these ideas

to modify and elaborate on this list. As the world’s living environments become denser,

we should not let our homes devolve into warehouses for sleep, but instead we should

actively mold them into incubators for life.

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07

Reference

ENDNOTES

1 “Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 16 September 2005: 2005

World Summit Outcome”, United Nations General Assembly. Distr.: General 24 October

2005.

2 Aristotle. Aristotle’s Politics. Oxford :Clarendon Press, 1905.

3 Smith, Emily Esfahani “Social Connection Makes a Better Brain” The Atlantic

Magazine. 29 October 2013.

4 Mlodinow, Leonard. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior.

Vintage Books, 2013.

5 Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community.

Simon & Schuster, 2007.

6 Goldhagen, Sarah Williams. Welcome To Your World: How the Built Environment

Shapes Our Lives. Harper, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2017.

7 Whyte, William H., Jr. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Washington, D.C.

:Conservation Foundation, 1980.

8 Newmam, Oscar. Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design.

Collier Books, 1978.

9 Rydahl, Anton, Resident at Ibsgaarden. Interview. 17 Oct. 2017

10 Vasudevan, Alex. The Autonomous City: A History of Urban Squatting. Verso,

2017.

11 Maccamant, Kathryn, and Charles Durrett. Creating Cohousing Building Sustainable

Communities. New Society Publ., 2014.

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12 “Residential Tower Antwerp.” C.F. Møller, <www.cfmoller.com/p/Residential-Tower-Antwerp-i3160.html.>

13 Newman, Oscar. Creating Defensible Space. Diane Publishing, 1996.





16 Newman, Oscar. Creating Defensible Space. Diane Publishing, 1996.

17 Bridger, Jessica. “What Cohousing Looks Like: Inside Berlin’s Radical R50 Baugruppen

Project.” Metropolis, 19 Feb. 2017, <www.metropolismag.com/architecture/

residential-architecture/dont-call-it-a-commune-inside-berlin-radical-cohousing-project/.>

18 Schultz, Kai. “In Bhutan, Happiness Index as Gauge for Social Ills.” The New

York Times, 18 January 2017. New York ed.

INTERVIEWS

1, Dr. Michael Lafond, Founder and Director of id22. Interview. 08 Oct. 2017

2. Marta Fernandez, Architects at June 14 Meyer-Grohbrügge&Chermayeff. Interview.

09 Oct. 2017

3. Christoph Roedig Partner at roedig.schop architekten. Interview. 11 Oct. 2017

4. Ulrich Fuchs, Architect at Barkow Leibinger. Interview. 12 Oct. 2017

5. Lone Wiggers, Partner at C.F. Møller Architects. Interview. 13 Oct. 2017

6. Claus Skovsgaard, Resident at Lange Eng. Interview. 15 Oct. 2017

7. Jesper Holck, Resident at Ibsgaarden. Interview. 17 Oct. 2017

8. Thorleif Ravnbak, Resident at Absalons Have. Interview. 17 Oct. 2017

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Breaking Up With The Double Loaded Corridor: A Study of Progressive Housing Design

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