I’ve had different conversations with different friends lately about the idea of artist communes, which kind of makes my skin itch because I’m just not that much of a hippy.
Yet I’ve been enamored for decades now with the “new” concept of cohousing*, which back in the 1980s when I first discovered it was a very, very fringe concept in the U.S. Thirty years later and it’s still on the fringe, but not quite as far out on the edges as it used to be. There are a lot of “intentional communities” in this country and more are being developed every day.
So, when I came across this article, “Circular Hakka Houses Create Self-Sustaining Communities”, featuring traditional “fortresses” (tulou) built by the Chinese Hakka people, I thought it would be a great way to combine old and new principles.
The tulou are huge circular buildings with open courtyards in the middle, and are two to four stories tall. The largest tulou could hold up to 80 families, living in groups within the fortress walls.
My idea was that you build something like this as a cohousing community. The first floor would be work/art space, such as dance studios, fine art (paint,drawing) studios, music rooms, computer labs, recording studios, etc. Because this tulou would not actually need to be a fortress, the outer walls could be mostly glass to let in natural light. The second floor would be split between community resources (group kitchen, entertainment room, childcare services, heavy-duty laundromat, gym, etc.) and larger apartments for larger and/or multi-generational families. The top floor would be mostly smaller apartments for individuals or couples. The courtyard could hold a storage shed for things like bikes and scooters, as well as a child/adult playground (if I can’t play on the swings I don’t want to be a part of your revolution!) and lots of green space for picnics, public performances, and general shenanigans. Depending on the environment/location, the roof could even be used as community space, possibly with a pool/hot tub and “bar” areas or more formal performance spaces.
The way this is designed, all the entrances face internally, so there would be a lot of interaction by default as people go about their day.
Even as a writer, I would love to live in a place like that. I would go down to the computer labs to write – maybe corrals could be “rented” for extended time by individuals – and then go sit outside on the commons to have a snack while the community choir practices for the winter holidays and kids run around in the playground, and then later make my way up to the entertainment room for the community showing of a popular movie or show that devolves into an argument about Italian cinema before retiring to my own private space for the night.
That just…that sounds heavenly to me.
Meantime, the only real “artists cohousing community” I’ve found is the Louisville Artists Cohousing Community in Colorado, which is still in the formative stages (that is, it doesn’t actually exist yet).
That’s just too bad. I think artist cohousing would be a brilliant idea overall.
* The line between co-housing and commune is a bit squiffy, but general usage seems to be:
- Communes are usually ideological in basis (religious, mostly, but also political) and more communal in that nearly everything but personal bedrooms are shared spaces. Think of old-fashioned college dorms.
- Cohousing arrangements might have ideological underpinnings (ecology/sustainability is a popular one) but are open to a wider variety to members, and usually features small individual abodes (apartments or cabins or small houses) with larger resources being shared along with centralized community spaces (group kitchens, entertainment/hobby areas, playgrounds, etc.).