Designed for Community

Last week the Pritzker prize for architecture was awarded to Riken Yamamoto for his focus on "multiplying opportunities for people to meet spontaneously through precise, rational design strategies."

We share that focus.  If you look at the layout of our campus you'll see that our units as well as the common house surround a common green space.  The common house is the at the bottom, building G:

The kitchen in each unit faces the common green space; from your kitchen or patio or the walkways you'll see your neighbors and the goings-on in the common house.  Parking is off to the left; when you walk to or from your car you'll encounter your neighbors, get caught up, make plans and what not.  Same thing when you trot over to the kitchen garden.

There's more.  We plan to do a lot of sharing.  Just as an example, between 33 units but we'll need only one lawnmower.  We will have a guestroom in the common house for use by each household.  We have a kitchen in the common house and ample room for community dinners and we're planning to have shared dinners on a regular basis. We also plan to manage the property ourselves, saving the cost of a management company.  Community is at the center of our design, reflected both in the architecture and in how we'll organize our activities.

But if you look at our plans you'll also see that we're not building a walled fortress like so many large apartment blocks going up inside the loop.  All units will have outward facing doors, windows or patios, and we have breezeways that make us accessible from the sidewalk so we can actively engage with our neighbors in the East End.