The Compound (revisited)

What if the idea of the compound, a community based living model were to be relocated to the suburbs.

After talking with my dad today I saw the compound also working on a much smaller scale, three to eight lots on a residential strip. The lots would be fenced from the street but be open to each other. Several of the key features for this scheme to work.

• Joint ownership of sites. Each house is composed of two to three singles/couples for cost reduction.
  
• Shared public spaces. Each house would be opened up on the bottom floor to have complete interaction with the surroundings. Forget the porch, the living room is the porch. Furniture, appliances and electronics are built into the wall, secure from vandalism and theft. Movies can be projected onto the walls.
• Extreme Privacy. In opposition to the openness of the living room, the bedrooms are private to the extreme. What I call the Hyper-interior, with no windows and completely soundproof the room would be similar to a sensory deprivation chamber. To wake up each morning and cross the threshold from extreme isolation to extreme openness would be awesome. This also makes living in close quarters with others tolerable.
  
• Joint infrastructure. Water Collection, Garden, Nursery, these things should all be consolidated. Even things like home school can take place within the site.

The main point is to rethink the boundaries that we draw in our lives. Should the division between public and private happen at the door of a house or can it happen within the house resulting in more shared space? Should we get power from the city or should we be generating it on site? David is working on some of these very things in his thesis, check out his proposal here.

Concept Drawings




Images from the Hyper-interior Essay