AIA SF Conference 2023 Recap, Sólheimar Ecovillage, Living in Senior Cohousing, and More | |
AIA 2023 Conference in the beautiful city of San Francisco | |
AIA SF Conference 2023 Recap
A Great Learning and Teaching Opportunity
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AIA 2023 Conference in San Francisco was a great success!
We are so grateful that our longtime partner, Vectorworks, invited us to present about Cohousing Communities, and how participatory design process can lead to more socially equitable and connected communities.
We would like to thank everyone who attended our presentation and contributed to such a lively and important discussion about how we can create a better housing development model that truly responds to the future residents' needs instead of the predictions by the market or the developers.
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We also had the opportunities to attend other educational sessions by many inspiring architects who are also redefining the way architects can engage in social activism.
It was so encouraging to see that there are many of us out there who truly believe that architects can play an active role in designing a more just and equitable society—whether it is through participatory design, community outreach, and even challenging outdated policies.
If this vision also resonates with you, we truly hope that you consider signing up for our Antioch Continuing Education Class—Designing Community-Enhanced Neighborhoods.
We just postponed our last 3 sessions to June 21st, 28th, and July 5th, 2023—so there's still time to sign up. We also have the recording of our first session that you can access at anytime.
Take your first step in becoming a citizen architect today!
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Antioch University 4-Part Live Online Program
Designing Community-Enhanced Neighborhoods: The Architecture of Cohousing
June 7th, 21st, 28th, & July 5th 2023
With this class, Charles Durrett will impart his knowledge from designing over 55 cohousing communities in North America (and probably more than anyone in the world) to give every cohousing designer a leg up in designing a new high-quality and high-functioning cohousing community.
Register here
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Other Updates in Cohousing: Table of Contents
June 2023
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- Email and Website Now Back Up
- Solheimar Ecovillage – Case Study for Neurological Diversity in Cohousing
- Living in a Senior Cohousing – A Letter from Susan Burwen
- A Different Kind of Senior Community – Village Hearth Cohousing
- Spring in Nevada City – A Video Compilation of Little Moments in Nevada City Cohousing
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Email and Website Now Back Up & Restored
Error on June 10–12 Now Fixed
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Some of you might be aware that we'd experienced some technical difficulties on June 10–12, 2023 with our website and email. We sincerely apologize if you were unable to get in touch with us during that time.
We were able to solve this issue very quickly. However, we have no record of anyone who was trying to contact us during the period that our website and email were done. So please feel free to shoot us another email or visit our website if you would like to get in touch with us.
We look forward to hearing from you.
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Sólheimar Ecovillage
A Case Study for Neurological Diversity in Cohousing
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Cohousing has gotten so much going for it… Supporting the development of children, successfully supporting parents, successfully supporting seniors, supporting ecological design, city-wide volunteerism, constantly striving for more social justice, and much more. And there is so far to go to learn and to relearn how to make cohousing more affordable, diverse, accessible, and even higher quality. There are many movements underfoot.
My two pet projects these days—besides the day-to-day of cohousing and homeless housing design—includes changing a few housing laws at the U.S. Congress. Literally “an act of” congress—specifically working to improve Title 6 and Title 24 of the HUD Guidelines based on the 1964 Fair Housing Act. More robustly being able to engage future residents in the design of affordable subsidized projects is key. Without that, it is currently impossible to build subsidized cohousing. That full activist story will be in the July newsletter.
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My second pet project that I’m working on is promoting neurological diversity in cohousing. For the most part, cohousing appears to be chock-full of the ultra-responsibles in society, people who want to get the most value out of life and are proactively doing so. Now empathy must come to the forefront as well to support neurodiversity.
I sometimes feel guilty because I feel as if, with a few exceptions, we took the coolest people in the county and put them into one neighborhood—we effectively made a cool people ghetto. The people who know how or want to learn how to cooperate, share, give, take, grow, and live lighter on the earth, all the while being happier. I feel like we made a cool people hub.
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We live in a society that values stimulating conversation. So, when someone comes around who was picked on throughout their youth because of a glitch—maybe an extra chromosome—maybe not the most well-adjusted for one reason or another, they can sometimes feel invisible, prejudiced against, and cast adrift.
Therefore, we need to support neurologically challenged individuals with an empathetic village, and not cast them adrift. Luckily, cohousing attracts folks with a heightened cognitive and empathetic capacity.
What encourages me the most about cohousing, and Sólheimar Ecovillage in Iceland, are their deliberate attempts to address neurological diversity, physical disability, classism, racism, sustainability and more.
The neighborhood level is just one place to address these issues, but when the neighborhood is designed just right, especially in influencing children about tolerance, empathy, and developing healthy social connections with others, it is simply the best place to teach the current and next generations what true empathetic and supportive community living is like.
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Something happens in cohousing....
People have one opportunity after another to learn something, or more likely a whole bunch of things, that they would have learned earlier if they had extraordinary parents or grew up in a supportive village. And they become a little happier, and they prosper.
Over and over again, folks who had rough lives because of their neurodivergence and look at their shoes when they first move in, then just a few months later look you in the eye, smile, converse, tell stories, make dinner for everyone and all the rest.
The project above, Sóleheimar Ecovillage, currently has an approximate population of 60 people, 45 of whom deal with diagnosed learning difficulties.
Now powered with thermal and solar energy (and love), the village is fully sustainable, boasting many greenhouses, an arboretum, egg-laying facilities and forestry programs and excellent interpersonal relationships. No one is cast adrift, and everyone is viewed as equals.
Here’s to putting the pieces together, and here’s to making a more viable society.
I am excited to go back to Iceland in September of this year to finish my book about Sólheimar, One Life: Live It.
Prior to my trip to Denmark, I asked the same audience to chime in on a new book about Senior Cohousing, and it ultimately resulted in the well acclaimed Senior Cohousing, A Community Approach to Independent Living. So, we would love to hear your thoughts about this topic as well! Please feel free to reach out to us if this topic interests you, or if you have any resources that you would like to recommend to us.
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Living in a Senior Cohousing Community
A Letter from Susan Burwen
| The following is a letter from our dear friend, Susan Burwen, who is also a resident living in Mountain View Senior Cohousing with her husband — the amazing initiators of this beautiful community, and my related thoughts on the topic of co-care. | |
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[Hi Chuck,] I think it’s important to set expectations for people going into senior cohousing communities about how the community is going to handle declining health issues of its members.
Our community has taken proactive steps to create a comprehensive database for each household, including information about care they might need, resources, and contacts, including information for heirs, so that community members know what to do in case of emergencies. Below is a partial list of categories that are covered.
- Members of the community who are willing to serve as Care Coordinators
- Information about who to contact in case of emergency
- Support Tasks You Anticipate Needing
- Support Tasks You Are Willing to Do
- Information and Paperwork about wills, trusts, assets, keys, passwords, etc.—and where to find this information
Resources: Geriatric Care Managers, Personal Alert Systems, etc.
I hope these ideas are useful for you.
Warm regards,
Susan
Sue Burwen, Mountain View Senior Cohousing
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Dear Susan, thank you.
It’s great to get this feedback and to have an increasingly nuanced conversation about co-care in senior cohousing communities—it’s important.
While the book The Senior Cohousing Handbook: A Community Approach to Independent Living does not describe official “co-caring” — it very much is a big part of the reality of senior cohousing—like it would be in any functioning village. See Chapter 7 in The Senior Cohousing Handbook for more on the topic of aging in place—including co-care and outside care.
From a practical point of view, no one is counting on co-care providing 100% of adequate care, especially without a spouse. One might think that it’s more than likely that those who receive co-care in their later years are those that have been giving some sort of care all along—in their more able years. A give and take so to speak—karma—whatever you want to call it. That said, the conversation and practical applications of co-care in all cohousing—senior cohousing and intergenerational cohousing alike—is absolutely ongoing and the care provided by the community is very organic and more or less almost never official.
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A Different Kind of Senior Community
Village Hearth Cohousing
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The National Cooperative Bank highlighted Village Hearth Cohousing, the first LGBTQ cohousing community that we know of anywhere.
We are so proud to have been their architects.
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Spring in Nevada City Cohousing
A video compilation of little moments in Nevada City Cohousing
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For more content like this, follow us on all of our social media platforms below. | |
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Books have played a major role from the beginning in terms of getting cohousing to this country and built in your town, starting with our first book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves (The European Story). Bookstores normally play a key role in culture change in general, and cohousing is no exception.
Many groups have contacted the publisher (New Society Press and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) directly to get bulk discounts, and I find that successful projects get started when lots of folks do this fun homework. I usually need to give a dozen copies of Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities, Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living and Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods away to planners, banks, neighbors, mayors, new residents, local architects, builders, and so on—to give them context. It saves the group thousands and thousands of hours, dollars, and delays, and most importantly makes for a better project.
Cohousing is more than a sound bite; it is cultural pivot, and it takes folks doing some fun research first. Seattle and the surrounding areas have about a dozen cohousing communities today largely because the bookstores in town have sold more than 1,000 copies of Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities and the San Francisco area has over 20 cohousing communities largely because the book has sold more than 2,000 copies there.
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