A Call for Strange Housing: Reinventing How We'll Live

Outlier Lofts by and courtesy of French2D

By Jenny and Anda French

Over the past five years our work at French 2D has evolved with a focus on what we call ‘strange housing’. For us, strange housing embodies a set of typological explorations that we have paired with direct social and cultural engagement. Historically, architectural housing typologies have found traction when they form a direct relationship with cultural movements. We will unpack how we define strange housing and identify cultural precedents and current conditions that influence our work to develop new models. We use strange housing to describe the types of multifamily housing we’ve worked on and see it as a way to define a broader ideological shift in contemporary issues.

In our work, we would define housing as strange when it addresses conditions that are not mainstream within their economic, social, cultural, or political context. In the US, we have found that housing is considered strange when: it’s ownership and acquisition is collective and not individual; it seeks to accommodate evolving definitions of families and households; it incorporates alternative political and decision making models, like consensus; and, when it takes head on the challenges of reconciling preservation with innovation.

In a climate in which architects are typically engaged towards the end of the decision-making process for new development, we acknowledge that it is challenging for architecture to reinvent housing within the traditional framework of practice. To question the existing models and dynamics of housing, we believe we must embrace and advocate for the social movements that these transformed typologies serve.

In our attempt to operate in this space, we have had to stretch our design purview to advocate for larger ideological movements. Often our day to day work requires that we take a stand on and experiment within these issues to help influence change. Here, we propose four shifting contexts, which we frame as endings and beginnings, as a way to prompt paradigm shifts for housing in the United States. Our way into these endings and beginnings is often told through a story:

Imagine we are a loose group of people, trying to establish a new way of living. First, we would call for the consideration of our belongings:

We call for the end of making, buying, and having too much stuff, and the beginning of design that leaves room and resources for new experiences.

At this cultural moment there are a number of popular precedents that all advocate for the reconsideration of consumption. Minimalism is often faulted for leading with aesthetics, but at its core is defined by the thoughtful editing of physical belongings. The Tiny House movement, vis a vis HGTV, embodies and projects reduction as a form of escape and countercultural flexibility. Parallel versions can be found in Colin Wright’s Exile Lifestyle and the push for a zero-waste existence. It is no surprise that these narratives reflect anxiety (economic, social and environmental) and that this anxiety directly addresses the domestic sphere and the built world.

Bay State Commons Co-housing by and courtesy of French2D

1047 Comm Ave by and courtesy of French2D

Our earliest work in strange housing types addressed more directly the metrics of spatial consumption. Our 180-unit project at 1047 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, built in 2016, participated in the early round of national attention to “micro-housing.” At its outset, the goal was to balance a reduction in living space size with an increase in community spaces. This is a prototype for resource sharing in the sense that you borrow from one (individual unit) to contribute to the whole (amenity spaces) and was one answer to the ongoing housing crisis felt in Boston. These units were also seen as a way to accommodate the changing demographics towards longer term, single person households in particular. Formally shaped tlike a cruise ship with a series of inserted shared areas, this model tracks most closely to current models of co-living. It served as an entrance point into our work to align typological thinking in housing with values-based social and cultural work.

Back to our forming group: You have reduced your footprint, but we are worried about leaving you alone in a small room…Our next consideration must be to address meaningful sharing:

We call for the end of going it alone, and for the beginning of sharing more of our lives. This idea has several cultural precedents, most of which are not found in the US. However, there is a little known and smaller lineage, springing from the 1970’s Danish cohousing model, filtered into the US through primarily progressive rural and suburban American cohousing groups, founded by the Baby-Boomer generation. What was formerly understood as an alternative living arrangement, perhaps misinterpreted as communal living, and it turn dismissed as too radical, is now resurfacing as a viable answer to massive future demand for multi-generational urban housing and the social fabric necessary to support it.

This demand has led to one of our current projects, a 30-unit urban ground-up cohousing community in Boston, developed by a newly formed community of households. As a building type, the project combines individual units with large communal spaces, a dining room, living room, kitchen and various social spaces. Architecturally, we have had to sculpt the collision of two domestic scales: units for individual households of various and alternative make-ups, and large-scale collective spaces that must still register as intimate and not institutional. In many ways, the formal and aesthetic approach to this architecture has worked best when it mimics the social structure of the resident/client group.

The client group uses a consensus model for all decision making, including when working with us in the design process. Using consensus, the group considers options while bringing all members along at each step of the decision-making path. In the event that someone is not in agreement, that person can block the decision and the group will work towards a mutually agreeable solution. In the context of giving design feedback, this has promoted the values of participation and cooperation, strengthening the community. In terms of design, this means that the building negotiates between moments of simplicity and complexity, allowing the formal solution to mirror the process. This process, unlike one that might stereotypically be understood as “group think,” is able to embrace nuance over flattening, and multiple readings over didactic ones.

From what we have experienced, meaningful sharing in the context of housing must be accompanied by the above described intentional social-political construct, as much as it must be reinforced by an alternative economic model. The households co-own the shared space and individually own the units, but the ownership identity of the project is understood as the whole community. Our design is influenced by the fundamental shift in the relationship between social status and ownership, which question the notion of success that is tied to individually identifiable property. This ethos of collective ownership and its entangled design approach allows the group to operate as a new body, shifting the social norms of privacy, care, and concern that help redefine the familial and domestic unit.

Now our group has formed a cohesive unit. Consensus has been a local answer to not going it alone. But, how do we extend this model out to a larger community?

We call for the end of talking without listening, and the beginning of listening and understanding. Our current political stalemate and broken connections between institutional and grassroots thinking have created an atmosphere where architecture-for-all is difficult. Here, we must acknowledge that architecture is not only about buildings. It must be fundamentally concerned with the structural dynamics, supported relationships, and facilitated experiences that the built environment mediates.

To test the possibilities of extending familial space into the public sphere, through domestic ritual, we created Place/Setting. Place/Setting is a set of civic spaces we have designed, built and programmed to share meals that spark open and disarming conversations across perceived boundaries. The domestic space of the table, heightened by environmental effects and removed from the privacy of the home or private forum, engenders vulnerability, civility and candor. We continue to work on objects and spaces to promote this form of exchange and sharing.

The group invited everyone to dinner. Now we can talk to each other. We can have different opinions and move forward - but how do we prevent old patterns and bad habits from stopping our progress?

We call for the end of one-dimensional history, and the beginning of embracing the complexities of the present. The orthodoxy of preservation aligned with NIMBY-ism leads to architecture and urbanism that is stale and unresponsive to its environmental, economic, and cultural context. In our practice, we have encountered reasoning akin to saying, “this is the way we’ve always done it,” as a justification to avoid experimentation and improvement. Well-intentioned insistence on dominant precedents that were once innovative have a similar effect. Instead, because we acknowledge that contexts constantly change and evolve, our practice model is one that finds playfulness and relativity within historical material. This is particularly relevant in the location of our practice – Boston, MA. In a recently completed project, we mined real and imagined histories of its site to influence the massing, elevations, and plans for a three-loft building. Amidst pressure to mimic the 19th century historic neighborhood, we choose to create a dialogue with the past, instead. Releasing ourselves from the need to project a singular, correct image of the project, we were able to both appease the preservationist voices and offer a critical contemporary response to the site and building type. In doing so, we advocate for buildings that allow new behavior to emerge and encourage ambiguity and multiplicity in their reception.