On Camping, Cohousing and Community
September 16, 2022
Sharing cooking duties, childcare and space in a more natural setting.
As the sun sets on the summer, Sam reflects on camping, cohousing, and community.
Throughout my life, Ive enjoyed camping, often in larger family groups and wondered to myself, could daily life ever be more like this? Sharing meals, childcare, facilities, and bigger outdoor spaces seems to make life so much richer, simpler and more enjoyable. Apart from the (lack of) sleep, I love the social aspects, sharing, caring, fun and mutual support that this environment seems to enable. This summer was no different, and I took my family camping to a few places in the UK with friends and family. They say “it takes a village to raise a child”, and I truly believe that – human beings are such complex social animals, and we thrive in company and within close groups. We have 3 young girls (1, 3, 6), and I see how much they and we benefit from having more children and other adults supporting and nurturing them.
Since studying Architecture and Landscape at the University of Sheffield, Ive been fascinated by different modes of living, and how we might transform the way we live. Indeed, similarly to camping, university halls of residences often provide people with a deeply profound experience, and create lifelong friends of housemates who live together and share spaces together. in recent years Cohousing has really gained traction in the UK, with people looking to address issues of loneliness, sustainability, and affordability. As a practice, we've been lucky enough to work with groups of people looking to live this way in Falmouth (Cornwall), Hartland (Devon), Bridport (Dorset), Bristol, the Isle of Wight, and sites in both North and South Somerset.
Diagrams exploring the level and extents of sharing in a cohousing development and how this compares with camping, university and suburbia!
The project has followed the 5 principles of Cohousing identified by the UK Cohousing website
Barefoot Architects was founded as a result of our involvement with Bridport Cohousing, who appointed us to co-design their unique, ground breaking project on an incredible site in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in West Dorset. This month, residents will move into the first 14 homes on this site for 53 new low energy dwellings! The result of an extraordinary journey over 12 years, it is a significant moment for the community led and cohousing movements in the UK. It was led by a truly inspiring group of local people who got together to create an intentional community housing development which they dreamed would be more neighbourly, more sustainable, and more affordable.
Cohousing is co-designed with intentional communities
We worked with future residents to design the overall site layout, homes, landscaping, to choose materials, and determine the level of sustainability and ambition for the project. This enabled the group to take a more radical approach to the design of the site, which includes car free streets, parking and a car club at the periphery of the site, and a community microgrid of Photovoltaic panels across ALL of the roofs. This provides cheap electricity to power the all electric homes, which will be Net Zero Carbon in use.
Cohousing includes both the provision of private and common facilities providing a balance between privacy and community
The individual homes meet the Nationally Described Space Standards, and each have their own kitchen, dining spaces, bathroom etc – just like a 'normal' house. Kitchens face towards the car free streets to encourage and enable social interaction, and garden boundaries are lower, with food growing areas woven through the development and a central 'village green' at the heart of the development. A common house building is at the centre of the scheme, providing a gateway and focus to the surrounding homes. It includes space for meetings, a communal kitchen, and flexible hall for eating together, parties, exercise classes etc.
The size and scale of cohousing is appropriate to support community dynamics for easy informal communal contact; this is usually between 10-40 households
With 53 homes, Bridport cohousing will be the largest development of its kind in the UK. Often they are smaller, but this ambitious project makes effective use of the land, which was purchased with a crowd funding campaign, and is being delivered alongside Bournemouth Churches Housing Association to provide a mix of tenures including shared ownership and social rental homes. This scale and approach has enabled the project to be more affordable, and effectively allowed it to get planning approval on land which was otherwise unable to be developed.
Cohousing embeds collective resident control and stewardship into its legal form and decision making
Bridport Community Cohousing are a Community Land Trust – they own the land and will act as stewards of it in perpetuity to ensure that the homes remain genuinely affordable, and available to local people. They have developed a number of policies, and commitments from all residents to deal with matters around car parking, maintenance, meetings and contributions of time.
Cohousing communities are inclusive and part of the wider community
The pioneer resident group who formed the initial core membership to drive the project, have been extremely active in engaging with the immediate neighbours and wider town community. During the design, planning and construction phases they have sought to build their own community, with events, gatherings, shared gardening, meals and celebrations. Eventually these will be held in the common house, which will welcome people from the surrounding area, and become the social heart and hub of the scheme.
So, is it worth it? Well, only time will tell, but for now we think it is an inspiring, important and radical approach to addressing the key issues of our time – loneliness, ecological and environmental crises, and as a practice we believe wholeheartedly in its ability to transform the way we live and create a better, fairer, happy future in better balance with nature and the environment.