IKEA's research lab Space10 has teamed up with architecture studio EFFEKT on The Urban Village Project, a vision for subscription-based housing that brings together people of different generations and encourages them to share facilities.
Both based in Copenhagen, Space10 and EFFEKT have developed a number of policies to move towards more communal living, or co-living.
These include shared daycare and transport, local water harvesting, communal dining and urban farming initiatives.
The Urban Village Project is a vision for a sustainable housing community
Rather than owning their homes outright, residents could have the option of buying "shares" of community real estate each month, progressively increasing ownership with the potential to cash these in at a later date. The designers also suggest that members of a community could swap apartments between them as family needs change.
More affordable homes
The Urban Village Project is being presented today as part of this year's Democratic Design Days, IKEA's annual conference, which takes place at the company's headquarters in Älmhult, Sweden.
It builds on Space10's research into the benefits of co-living, which also led the studio to propose the self-sustaining SolarVille village. It also draws on the expertise developed by EFFEKT with its ReGen Villages project, which featured a community of homes with integrated greenhouses.
The subscription-based housing model would provide multi-generational co-living
The proposa...