A two storey house, for a couple and their son, is structured within a square volume of 9 by 9mts. Inside intersects another volume at a higher level, which is rotated 45 degrees in relation to the floor plan, allowing double heights and the arrangement of spaces in the first floor.
The program is ordered in a simple way, at the first floor a single space for the living room, dining room and kitchen and on the back a sleeping area and the stairs to the second floor.
Plan
Elevation
Plan
Then, to the side and facing north, the terrace partly enclosed, allowing the users to go outside during days of extreme wind.
Finally, in the diagonal volume or second floor, the room and the bathroom. Three defined sectors as the result of the orientation to the panoramic views of the landscape: the isle, the beach and the forest in front of the ocean.
Growing out of the success of coworking, the latest big phenomenon in the world of property is coliving. Like its predecessor, coliving is predicated upon the idea that sharing space can bring benefits to users in terms of cost and community. And, like its predecessor, there are already many variations on the idea with numerous different ventures appearing in the past year, each tweaking the basic concept to find a niche.
There are a lot of existing accommodation types that are “a bit like” coliving—depending on who you ask, coliving might be described as either a halfway point between apartments and hotels, “dorms for adults” or “glorified hostels.” And yet, despite these similarities to recognizable paradigms, countless recent articles have proclaimed that coliving could “change our thinking on property and ownership,” “change the way we work and travel,” or perhaps even “solve the housing crisis.” How can coliving be so familiar and yet so groundbreaking at the same time? To find out, I spent a week at a soon-to-open property in Miami run by Roam, a company which has taken a uniquely international approach to the coliving formula.
Roam’s central concept is this: for a monthly subscription of $1800 USD, members can live in any Roam property around the world, and move between them whenever they choose (rooms are also available for a week at a time at $500 a week, but Roam gives priority to those who sign up for the long-term). Members may choose to hold a Roam subscription in addition to their own rented home, or they may choose to replace their existing apartment entirely. In return, residents get a room with an en-suite bathroom, a shared kitchen and laundry room, and a coworking space with a rock-solid wifi connection, alongside other shared amenities such as pools and relaxation spaces which vary depending on the property. With properties in Bali, Miami, and Madrid, more on the way in London and Buenos Aires, and ambitions to expand into dozens of cities worldwide, Roam hopes to offer its members a way to travel the world while holding down a job, all without sacrificing on the quality of their accommodation. The system may seem simple enough, but the cultural shifts which have made it possible—and the changes it may yet inspire—go much deeper.
Roam Bali. Image Courtesy of Roam
The End of “The End of Work”
In 1930, celebrated economist John Maynard Keynes made a prediction: by the turn of the millennium, the efficiencies offered by modern technology would be enough that the entire population would work, on average, 15 hours a week. Needless to say, this didn’t happen. Automation and other forms of efficiency did indeed become commonplace, and as a result far fewer people are now employed in the manual labor and production roles that were the norm in the early 20th century. Yet at the same time, late capitalism made sure that it was always necessary for people to hold down jobs. This gave way to the rise of what, in 2013, were described as “Bullshit Jobs” by the anthropologist David Graeber, administration and service positions which seem to be “pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.”
But even as Graeber was outlining this phenomenon, another trend was emerging to take its place: people are now inventing their own jobs, and finding ingenious ways to earn money doing almost anything they want. Whether we’re talking about something as time-honored as chasing a freelance writing career or something as new and ill-defined as becoming an Instagram celebrity, the internet has made it easier than ever for people to reject the world of bullshit jobs and instead create a more fulfilling career from the ground up. And, as more and more people are choosing exactly how they earn their money, more people are choosing to do so in a way that doesn’t tie them to a single location, giving them the freedom to travel and work simultaneously.
Roam Miami. Image Courtesy of Roam
Such people might commonly be referred to as “digital nomads,” but Roam prefers the term “location independent” to reflect the growth of the trend: “There’s that type of crowd who are using geo-arbitrage to travel the world and they usually get classified under ‘digital nomad’—but that’s just one section of location independence, whereas location independence is the larger umbrella,” says Dane Andrews, Roam’s VP of Sales. “[Roam] caters to people who have always wanted to be location independent but haven’t been able to.” Similarly, the company’s founder Bruno Haid explains that what we are seeing now might be thought of as the “second generation” of digital nomads; people who want the opportunity to travel the world and hold down a career simultaneously, but don’t have the tolerance for (or even love of) inconvenience that characterizes the earlier generation of digital nomads.
For the modern location independent worker, there’s a lot about our current systems of accommodation that no longer make any sense. A standard rental, while easy and reliable, ties you to a specific location; hostels are a great way to see new places and meet new people, but they usually offer lower quality accommodation to people for whom work is not a priority; and hotels might provide a nice place to stay, but they usually prioritize privacy over making friends, and are often prohibitively expensive besides. Roam is an attempt to combine the best elements of all of these into a single package that suits the emergent lifestyle of the 21st century.
Roam Bali. Image Courtesy of Roam
The End of City Premiums
Perhaps the most intriguing traditional structure that Roam is fighting against is the idea that certain global cities should be necessarily more expensive to live in than their smaller counterparts. This idea has always been tied to the allure of cities—in a place with more opportunities, more ideas to exchange, and more people to meet, a higher price can be charged for accommodation and subsequently for land. But this economic fact also makes little sense for the location independent worker. In a world where countless websites can help to connect people to work opportunities, where meetings can be conducted via Skype or Google Hangouts, and where Whatsapp, Slack and Facebook Messenger keep us connected to our colleagues at all times, what is the benefit of breaking the bank to live in somewhere as expensive as Manhattan?
Roam’s flat rate of $1800 per month across all properties, regardless of the city they are located in, is an attempt to prove that for their customer base location is no longer tied to the logic of global capitalism—and that ultimately, the economic dimension of space itself is beginning to flatten out.
Roam Bali. Image Courtesy of Roam
Of course, at this early stage of that process, there are more than a few kinks to be worked out; for example, the company is currently fielding massive interest for its forthcoming London property from existing Londoners for whom $1800 a month is a no-brainer financially. Such a financial proposition is key for other companies like the WeWork offshoot WeLive, whose first coliving property on Wall Street attempts to provide a cheaper option for living in Manhattan—but applied to Roam’s global ambitions it seems to miss the point somewhat.
Roam Madrid. Image Courtesy of Roam
Concretizing the Global Village
Though the economic benefits of city life may not hold as much weight as they once did, there are other aspects of urban living that Roam clearly wishes to preserve. A key part of their mission is to foster social ties that span the globe, connecting residents in all properties in a single community. Central to this plan will be a kind of in-built social media platform, which is currently in development, which will allow “Roamers” to connect with and keep in touch with other members, even when they aren’t living on the same property as each other.
“One of the things we’re working on on the digital platform right now is, can you say ‘we are all designers, shouldn’t we just all meet in Barcelona in August?’” explains Bruno Haid. “The question is how can you not only unbundle the lease from specific locations but also how can you make those social dynamics more transient?”
This international, interconnected community might be thought of as a physical microcosm of Marshall McLuhan’s metaphorical “Global Village”; in much the same way as JG Ballard claimed that the global network of airports might be considered the city of the 21st century, Roam is creating a kind of 21st century village—with a single community spread out across the globe but living in pockets of 20-50 people, all connected via the internet to form a functional village unit.
Roam Miami. Image Courtesy of Roam
The Architecture of a Global Community
So what role does architecture play in this global village? Firstly, community is predictably a focus when it comes to architecture too. “One of the things we always look for is—since we are very much about the community—is that sense of community when you’re there,” explains Andrews. “We don’t look for places that have dark and narrow hallways, something that you walk out of your room and don’t feel like you’re a part of anything.”
Much of this sense of community is also fostered in the details. In the kitchens, for example, the cabinets have glass fronts so that residents can see what food their neighbors have, and thus what might be available to borrow if they simply ask. The rooms also don’t have desks, in order to encourage residents to make use of the coworking space and other communal areas.
In fact, a lot of Roam’s rethinking of living revolves around what can be taken away, rather than what could be added. Along with desks, bedrooms are stripped of closets, for example, to remind residents that they’re no longer permanently tied to a space. “We’re in between a hotel and an apartment, so we want people to still feel transient, but also still feel at home—which I think you can get by not necessarily having a closet,” says Kate Huentelman, Roam’s Head of Experience. Haid adds that “it’s part of the idea of… I don’t want to say ‘new minimalism’ [Huentelman offers instead the term ‘essentialism’] but you can go anywhere you want and have everything you need there. For example we have universal power outlets, so it doesn’t matter if you’ve got UK or US or European plugs. These are all small details that enable you to travel with fewer and fewer possessions.”
Roam Madrid. Image Courtesy of Roam
But by far the most important architectural aspect of the Roam properties is what Haid and Andrews describe as “telling unique stories.” While many of the finer details might be copied across all of the company’s properties, Roam has no desire to be the MacDonald’s of coliving by using the same design features in all its properties for the sake of brand consistency. Instead, their properties to date are all character-filled reflections of their location. In Bali, the company converted a contemporary hotel, featuring a pool in the courtyard and a rooftop coworking space; in Miami, they took on the oldest continuously-operating hotel in the city, a 1908 boarding house comprising four brightly-colored timber houses arranged around a lush courtyard; their forthcoming Madrid property was built in the 1870s for the Marquess of Villamagna.
Taking a looking at coliving’s precursor, it’s clear that one of coworking’s most valuable strengths is the way it makes facilities available to freelancers and small companies that those people could otherwise never afford; it’s not just about having a desk and a solid wifi connection, but about getting top-of-the-range video conferencing facilities, climate control you can adjust with your smartphone and a foosball table in the corner. With coworking, next-level functionality became part of the value proposition.
In Roam’s vision of coliving, the value proposition is much the same—the only difference being that when it comes to living spaces, “next-level functionality” simply means a home that is a nice place to be, and that means next-level architecture. In a normal living setup, your home might be the nicest place you can afford, and the city is a necessary system of support that you rely on for work; in Roam’s coliving vision, your home is one of the nicest places in the city, and the city itself is free to become the vibrant backdrop for your life experiences—with another architecturally exquisite home and city just a plane ticket away.
Architecture Team: Omar Gandhi Architect Inc. in collaboration with Design Base 8; Omar Gandhi (Principal), Peter Braithwaite (Intern Architect), Peter Kolodziej (Intern Architect), Maxwell Schnutgen (Intern Architect), Elizabeth Powell (Intern Architect), Jeff Shaw (Intern Architect)
Design Team: Design Base 8 in collaboration with Omar Gandhi Architect Inc.; Garrett Helm, Jon Siani, and Jon Wilson
Client: Kevin and Stephanie Briody
Consulting Team: Design Base 8, Omar Gandhi Architect Inc, Andrea Doncaster Engineering, Joseph ‘MacGee’ MacFarlane
From the architect. Lawrence MacIsaac recalls stories of his great grandfather using the property to teach his sons how to snare rabbits, while his great grandmother commonly used the ‘laundry stone’ at the bottom of a small waterfall to wash clothing. With the extremely steep sides of the gorge it was difficult to do anything with the land, including the harvesting of trees, so it was left to grow wild.
Before there was a site, there was an idea of a cabin in nature. As the Northeastern seaboard urbanized, the client longed for an escape to a wilder land. Arriving in Cape Breton, they found a culture and remoteness no longer common to the United States.
To leverage the surrounding landscape, the home would put the outdoor environment on display and encourage the occupants to get out and explore the terrain. On a trip to Nova Scotia, Kevin Briody and Design Base 8 became fascinated with the built typologies of the region.
Plan
After working closely with the client through numerous design iterations, Design Base 8, a design collective based in NYC, reached out to Omar Gandhi Architect of Halifax to collaborate on the final design, detailing, and construction process.
The cabin at Rabbit Snare Gorge is the result. It is the first of three small creature-like structures hidden in the mysterious landscape.
Section
The cabin is the primary dwelling on a 46 acre parcel of land found on the rugged wooded coastline of rural Cape Breton. The cabin is a gently adapted gabled tower which allows it to reach above the forest canopy with two major viewing platforms, one oriented directly towards the ocean and the other along the length of the convergent brook valley.
The landscape of Rabbit Snare Gorge is defined by the steep slopes of the Cape Breton Highlands, Acadian forest, deep gorges cut by a babbling brook, and the rocky cliffs of the Northumberland Strait. The elevated position of the site allows for a long, wide view of the entire property including the head of the gorge leading towards the ocean. The procession from this rough landscape into the cabin begins with the entry and bedrooms on the ground floor, a double height kitchen and dining room on the second floor, and lastly the living space on the third floor with the final lookout view of the entire property.
The structure is linked to the local vernacular by a number of formal elements. The archetypal gable and shed forms of the cabin are combined to open views and follow the path of the sun, emphasize the major interior spaces, and accentuate the verticality of the tower, while efficiently shedding snow and rain. Traditional, local wood board cladding is used on the exterior of the cabin. The cabin’s steel entry hoop takes its shape from the entry windbreaks unique to the Cape Breton and Newfoundland coastal communities.
The client, an avid outdoorsman and hobby arborist, has a sincere respect for the natural landscape. Therefore, sensitivity to site and ecological preservation was an early and major design parameter. The tower typology of the cabin offers elevated views and ample programming within a minimal footprint. However, the exposure of the sloped site means it endures the full brunt of heavy Atlantic rainstorms, winter Nor’easters, corrosive salt-spray from crashing swell, and strong suetes winds—local south-easterlies which accelerate down the Highland escarpment to reach speeds of over 200km/h.
The strong, local suetes demand a robust structural system to withstand major lateral and uplift loads. The tall cabin combats these high winds through redundant sheathing—every solid plane, including the interior partition wall, contribute as shear walls, diaphragms and stacked compression rings. The windbreak, constructed out of welded weathering steel, is then hung from the framing.
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As part of their mission to foster debate about architecture and the city within a broader social context, the Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad will carry out the 4th edition of their International Architecture Congress from June 29-July 1st in Pamplona. Titled “Architecture: Change of Climate,” the latest event echoes themes from the previous years, which were related to the crisis affecting Spain and its architects. This year the debate seeks to emphasize the need for change in architectural practices in order to improve our environment.
The title of this year’s congress refers as much to the change of climate taking place in architecture, which the crisis has put at an economic and ethical crossroads, as to the importance of architecture and planning when facing the challenges posed by climate change, perhaps the most pressing matter of our time.
Read on after the break for the full program and text from Luis Fernández-Galiano, Director of the IV International Architecture Congress, which introduces the paradigms that architects like Rem Koolhaas, Bjarke Ingels, Winy Maas, Pierre de Meuron, Iñaki Ábalos and Jean-Philippe Vassal will examine at this event.
Following the first congress, which took place in June 2010 under the motto ‘Architecture: More for Less,’ the second, held in June 2012 under the theme ‘Architecture: the Common,’ and the third, celebrated in June 2014 under the title ‘Necessary Architecture,’ always at the Baluarte Center of Pamplona, the fourth congress of the Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad has been convened in the Navarrese capital to address the ‘Change of Climate’ in architecture, a field undergoing a deep transformation as the urgencies posed by climate change call for a rethinking of how to make buildings and cities: architecture changes to change the world.
The initial congress was attended by Renzo Piano, Jacques Herzog, and Glenn Murcutt, three holders of the Pritzker, architecture’s Nobel, along with Harvard’s and Columbia’s architecture school deans, the philosopher SlavojZizek, and others from five continents. The second encounter brought in three other Pritzker laureates – Norman Foster to open the symposium and two Iberian masters, Rafael Moneo and Eduardo Souto de Moura, to close it – to head a distinguished cast of international architects. The third, like its precedessors, put veteran figures like Dominique Perrault side by side with architects with shorter but equally brilliant careers, and ended with the presence of the first Iberian ever to receive the Pritzker, Álvaro Siza.
The first three congresses proposed tools for dealing with our lingering crisis; the fourth endeavors to throw light on the need for change in architectural attitudes if our environment and the lives of people are to improve. To this end we again bring together world architects and figures of different countries known to combine professional excellence with attention to sustainability and architecture’s social dimension. The title of this year’s congress refers as much to the change of climate taking place in architecture, which the crisis has put at an economic and ethical crossroads, as to the importance of architecture and planning when facing the challenges posed by climate change, perhaps the most pressing matter of our time.
If the first congress (‘More for Less’) advocated austerity, the second (‘The Common’) called for solidarity based on what we share, and the third (‘Necessary Architecture’) denounced the superfluous in favor of the indispensable – “The necessary, but no less than the necessary” –, this fourth congress seeks to examine the current situation of architecture by simultaneously addressing the ongoing transformation of its academic and professional base, which perhaps signals a change of paradigm in how it is understood and practiced, and the relevant role that construction and the city play in climate change, given that most of the energy we consume and most of the carbon dioxide we release in the burning of fossil fuels ultimately comes from the way buildings are conceived and territories are occupied: architecture needs a change of climate, and climate change needs to be tackled from the angle of architecture.
PROGRAM
June 29 – July 1, 2016 Pamplona, Palacio Baluarte
June 29th
June 29th, morning Introduction: Climate Change Rem Koolhaas (OMA), Rotterdam Pierre de Meuron (Herzog & de Meuron), Basel Relator: Richard Ingersoll, Florence
June 29th, afternoon Strategies of the Essential Kjetil Traedal Thorsen (Snøhetta), Oslo and New York Jean-Philippe Vassal (Lacaton & Vassal), Paris Relator: Llàtzer Moix, Barcelona Awards presentation
June 30th, morning Aesthetics of Energy I. Ábalos y R. Sentkiewicz (AS+), Cambridge and Madrid Louisa Hutton (Sauerbruch Hutton), Berliin Relator: Antonio Lucas, Madrid Awards presentation
June 30th, afternoon Sustainable Experiences and closing Dietmar Eberle (Baumschlager Eberle), Lustenau Winy Maas (MVRDV), Rotterdam Bjarke Ingels (BIG), Copenhagen and New York Relators: Peter Buchanan, London Vicente Verdú, Madrid
The Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad is a private non-profit cultural endeavor with a public national and international reach. It was created in 2008 thanks to the initiative of the architect Francisco Mangado and his interest in promoting architecture as a field indissolubly linked to life and society.
The Foundation goes by the conviction that architecture is called upon to address the problems that afflict the complex social fabric, and provide solutions by interacting with other disciplines. It understands architecture as a service that should bind together, condition, and facilitate the life of citizens. Hence, the Foundation seeks to bring together the knowledge and know-how of all fields concerned with the great challenges of our times.
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Old School Conversion ‘Ons Dorp’ is a project completed by Standard Studio & CASA architecten. The apartment is located in a former school building in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Old School Conversion ‘Ons Dorp’ by Standard Studio: “Ons Dorp is a school building that got converted into different apartments. This particular one was designed for a family of five. The teacher’s lounge got remodelled into the bedrooms and the classroom into..
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) in Ljubljana, Slovenia has announced that the project, Home at Arsenale, will be presented in the Slovenia Pavilion at the 15th International Biennale in Venice.
The project, curated by Aljosa Dekleva and Tina Gregoric, responds to the Biennale’s title, Reporting From the Front, by creating a “curated library” that addresses topics of home and dwelling as social and environmental issues.
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
“The curators conceived a site-specific inhabitable spatial wooden structure, an abstract compact home performing as a curated library that operates as a platform for exploring the concepts of home and dwelling during the exhibition and beyond,” states a press release.
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
Architects, artists, critics, and curators from various backgrounds will contribute to the library with ten books addressing the ideas of home and dwelling from their perspectives. Ultimately, however, the installation—with around 300 books—will relocate to the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana.
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
The project additionally includes a series of lectures, talks, and performances to be held during the Biennale.
