At Home Together

Antje Steinmuller, Essay, expanding design practices, Imminent Urban Commons, Middle Density, Neeraj Bhatia, Politics and economics, The Urban Works Agency, Urban Paradigms

Architect’s role, Co-living, Collective city, Collective housing, Community, Contemporary metropolis, Contemporary urbanization, Design-based research, Essay, Future Commoning Cities, Housing, Imminent Commons, Informal city, Micro-community, Politics, Public vs. Private, Research, Residential, San Francisco, Seoul, Seoul Biennale 2017, Social city, Social housing, South Korea, USA, Utopian practices

At Home Together investigates the intentions and institutions of contemporary collective living experiments in San Francisco. Analyzing these domestic spaces through their spatial and social types as well as political ideology, the research aims to identify inherent patterns within the shifting conceptions of the public and private spheres. Against the backdrop of well-known communes of the 1960s and 70s, presented here are ten contemporary case studies of communal living – from communes to co-living to hacker hostels – as well as five projective design proposals. Framing the tension between the individual and the collective, At Home Together reveals the challenging negotiation between urban hardware and soft forms of reappropriation.