At home, together: Building shared-living communities
Tags: Shared Living, Community, Design, Architecture

At home, together: Building shared-living communities

Ahead of the third in our series of lectures exploring ‘Designing for Shared Living’, architect and writer Hannah Wood explores the hurdles often faced by co-living groups as they seek to build lifelong communities, and how they’re being overcome.

“I first became excited by shared living when speaking about it with my friends,” says strategist Lars Lundbye as he chops asparagus for a communal dinner. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all live together? Initially, the plan was to buy a summer house. Then time went by and we began thinking, maybe we could retire together when we get old. But each time we tried to realise those dreams, we were challenged by the practicalities. Not only would we all have to agree it was the right thing to do at the same time, but the organisational and financial implications of moving forward just felt insurmountable.”

This experience, combined with Lundbye’s professional involvement in building communities online, inspired him and his interdisciplinary team — it includes architects and designers, a financial strategist, and an organisational psychologist — to found the co-living facilitation company Almenr. According to its research, self-initiated communities take, on average, more than seven years to realise their dream of living together, and in the meantime, perhaps understandably, most separate. Almenr’s aim is to make the process more straightforward through co-living matchmaking, advice and planning. In its opinion, it shouldn’t take more than two years before a community has an opportunity to move in together.

Almenr’s model was inspired by the Baugruppe movement in Berlin, which self-funded and constructed a co-share on Ritterstrausse 50 (R50) in 2013. The project was a reaction to housing speculation in the city which has fuelled both price inflation and a debate over mietpreisbremse, or rent caps. While the architect-led Baugruppe movement aimed to ask what happens when a community starts building, it was enabled by a breakthrough in the financing of co-living — a specialised shared mortage package offered by Nürnberg’s UmweltBank, which was structured through the pooling of individual home loans.

Using Almenr’s online platform, prospective residents build a profile by answering questions about themselves and how they wish to live. They are then matched with each other in groups called “architypes”. Once architypes have been established, they’re given the opportunity to scout for properties and enter the co-design phase, guided by Almenr’s in-house co-living architects and designers. The final phase of the process is the formalisation of the project, which includes obtaining planning, financing and construction.

Almenr aims to combine the approaches of new co-living operators and ground-up community activism, rather than reinforcing the divide between them.

“We have to face that we are part of the same movement,” Lundbye explains. “I guess the difference is that we are working towards creating socially sustainable communities.” Almenr currently has one secured co-living site (Allerslev Old School, a 35-minute train ride from central Copenhagen, which will be transformed into 28 homes with two hectares of common space), and six architype lists for future co-livers to sign up to and participate in workshops and events to build their own communities.