Comment: Despite living close to their neighbours, opportunities for residents of inner-city apartments to talk with each other are often limited to brief chit-chat in the elevator. Apartment buildings have long been characterised by small corridors and a lack of quality common spaces where people can socialise. And this, in turn, has framed our expectations for high-density housing.
Our dominant approach to high-density housing aims to maximise private space and minimise shared space. It’s a developer-led model that focuses primarily on maximising net-lettable floor area through private spaces (individual dwelling units) and commercial spaces (such as cafés and restaurants), with limited areas for community gatherings.
My recent research found the quantity of common space in developer-led housing can be as little as six percent and largely limited to internal corridors and stairwells. In contrast, in collective housing or co-housing designs that I explored in Aotearoa, an average of 20 percent is common space. Similar co-housing designs overseas have an average of 36 percent common space.
Why do common areas matter? In short, they help foster informal social interactions that support social wellbeing and contribute to a sense of community. Co-housing approaches, where residents choose to live with one another within intentional communities, deliberately provide communal spaces to support these social benefits.
Can we achieve similar benefits in the “unintentional communities” of developer-led housing where residents often don’t know their neighbours?
One model of how this could be done is the 26 Aroha apartments in Sandringham, Auckland. Just over a quarter (27 percent) of the 26 Aroha development is common space. This includes a “rooftop hub” that provides a shared laundry, kitchen, dining table, and garden. This area brings residents together and invites a range of social activities including sharing a meal.
Tenants who rent the 13 apartments can participate in the community’s management. There’s also an informal hui every three to four months that focuses on resident wellbeing.
The apartments have proved popular and there is now a waiting list, pointing not only to the attraction this type of development has for tenants but also to their potential economic value for landlords.
Nightingale Village in Melbourne has achieved something similar on a larger scale. The development consists of six neighbouring apartment buildings. Each of these six “micro-communities” has a multi-purpose common room and lounge. These spaces are complemented by outdoor seating areas that foster social interaction and a shared sense of community.
Like 26 Aroha, shared roof-top gardens are a feature of the Nightingale Village buildings. Allowing communal use of roof-top areas marks a departure from conventional approaches to apartment design where these spaces have typically been available only to the residents of penthouse apartments.
Finding the sweet spot
Based on my research, I estimated a mix of 28 percent common space, 60 percent private space, and 12 percent public space to be the “sweet spot” to achieve a balance between social benefits (for residents) and economic benefits (for the developer).
Housing density—measured in terms of both dwelling units and habitable rooms per hectare—will always affect a development’s income. But my modelling showed that clever design, such as creating roof-top gardens, can ensure a generous amount of common space while still achieving housing densities close to those of standard apartment designs.
As the Nightingale Village model also shows, large-scale apartment developments do not have to comprise a single building. Rather, a series of buildings can provide for micro-communities within the development. My findings suggest 25 households as the maximum size for these micro-communities in a large-scale housing complex.
Putting these ideas into practice will help make socially sustainable apartment living a reality. What is clear is that common space does have a real economic and social value. And if we continue to design apartments with minimal shared spaces, we neglect the potential for these communities to thrive and for social connections to be formed.
This type of collective housing is not a new idea. Papakāinga are well recognised in Māori culture and are foundational in our country’s history. We are social beings and living in isolated dwellings is ultimately unsustainable for the future of housing. The sooner we realise this and change our approach to apartment design, the better.
This article was originally published on Newsroom.
Alexander Loughnan is a Master of Architecture graduate from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.