The Community House:
Housing as a Facilitator of the Collective
The individuals, communities, and interconnected lives present within this Oakland city block represent a broad spectrum of diversity in home and work life. Each living, working, and social space should respect and reflect that diversity, allowing for individual to have autonomy and flexibility within these spaces. We have seen spaces for work and life merge into a single household. Once homogonous living spaces have expanded, needing to accommodate a verity of spatial needs: a place of rest, and office and work from home space, a school, a care facility for sick family members, a space for small businesses and quarantine startups, or all of these use cases all at once. Each unit acts as a modular capsule, with elements of individual space on the top floor and expanded community facilities on the ground floors. each space connected to the next, sequenced in order of most private to most public. Capsule are also used as to connect indoor personal space and outdoor community spaces to one another.
What connects these variety of living and working experiences is the emphasis of community at the base of the social structure. Spaces within each unit used by residents and business owners for engaging their community are allowed to be fully public or fully individual, with flexible partitions to connect the two spaces. Shared spaces for work, cooking, and bathing, are included outside of each unit, allowing for a coop collaborative community living space outside of one's own apartment. Small and large businesses rely on community to support and uplift their work spaces. Community is relied upon to support the large proportion of marginalized individuals that live in the housing along this street. Housing must go beyond its traditional forms and broaden its scope as a tool to facilitate community connection. (Academic Project)
