Archinect - News

$800-a-month sleeping pods? One company thinks they are the solution to California’s housing crisis

2022-05-20T18:41:00-04:00

A new Silicon Valley startup is taking the charge put forth by the recent expansion of ADUs and other non-traditional forms of accommodation in the uphill battle to provide affordable housing to the millions of Californians struggling to find a way forward.

Business Insider recently took a closeup look at the San Francisco-based Brownstone Shared Housing, an eight-month-old company co-founded by former state auditors James Stallworth and Christina Lennox, that has designed a new stackable sleeping pod currently being modeled within single-family homes in Bakersfield and Palo Alto.

Similar to the sleeping capsules common to urban Japanese hotels and resorts, the four-foot-tall spaces can be scaled to hold up to 14 people and are being marketed by the company as an alternative to the high-rent, low-availability housing situation typical in the areas adjacent to Stanford University.

Foster + Partners win design competition for co-living project in Shenzhen

2020-02-12T12:27:00-05:00

Foster + Partners has revealed their winning design for the Qianhai Talents' Apartments in Shenzhen, China.

The co-living project is designed for "talents," which are young professionals who engage in a rigorous work-centered lifestyle away from their families. Operating as a dynamic co-living space, the Talents' Apartments capitalize on the use of shared space. Through investigation the design team found that dining was one of the common activities that brings people together in communal settings. While each apartment is equipped with a small kitchenette for basic necessities, primary cooking activities take place in a communal area. Feeding twelve residential units across three levels, this shared kitchen forms a hub where all of the building's residents can gather.

Talent's Apartment. © Foster + Partners

Additionally, amenities such as a clubhouse, wellness and spa center, townhall, and co-working space are situated within the terraced "skygardens" of the tower. "As working pract...

San Jose will be home to the largest co-housing building in the world set to feature "vertical neighborhoods"

2019-06-10T16:24:00-04:00

The co-living startup Starcity plans to build an 800-unit, 18-story “dorm for adults” to help affordably house Silicon Valley’s booming workforce. Dishotsky, the co-founder/CEO of the co-housing start-up Starcity, is now working to fill America’s housing-strapped cities with a scaled-up version of his childhood idyll.

Said to be the an 18-story "dorm for adults" the co-living startup Starcity aims to "redefining the meaning of home." The co-founder and CEO Jon Dishotsky is an advocate for co-living due to his upbringing in suburban Palo Alto. If asked about his upbringing, Dishotsky will share the story of growing up in a co-housing compound thanks to his Stanford professor dad who would often host students during the years. With this upbringing Dishotsky believes this model of creating housing developments with this method of co-living will help "fill America's housing-strapped cities with scaled up versions of his childhood idyll."

A rendering of Starcity's proposed co-living complex, slated to be built in downtown San Jose. Image © Starcity

After launching in 2016, Dishotsky and his team have already broke ground on seven developments in Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, Starcity will be the largest. Aiming to attract renters with "Millennial-friendly amenities" individuals who decided to...

Checking in with Scarlet Architects' social living experiment ten years later

2019-03-25T15:01:00-04:00

In 2009, Jane Aimer and Lindley Naismith of the Auckland-based firm Scarlet Architects decided to embark on a social experiment. Rather than the typical single family home, Aimer and Naismith wanted to design a co-living space for their two separate families.

Friends since the second year of architecture school, the two were interested in exploring the notion of intensification and community. "We could see a way we could all support each other," Aimer recalls to the New Zealand site, Stuff.

The result was a set of adjoining townhouses that provided each of their families with separate living spaces while having shared facilities such as a front lobby, a large roof deck, and back gardens integrated throughout.

Ten years later, the families are still living side by side, and their unique housing typology has been perfectly adaptable to the growing realities of multigenerational living as their aging parents lived next door, and their adult children returned home.

The concept of co...

Shared housing startups prepare for big business

2018-05-23T15:54:00-04:00

A Crunchbase News analysis of residential-focused real estate startups uncovered a raft of companies with a shared and temporary housing focus that have raised funding in the past year or so. This isn’t a U.S.-specific phenomenon. Funded shared and short-term housing startups are cropping up across the globe, from China to Europe to Southeast Asia.

Crunchbase reporter Joanna Glasner takes a look at the new crop of shared and short-term housing startups that have recently raised millions of dollars in funding, such as Common, Starcity, Roomi, Ollie, HubHaus, and others.

Another car brand enters residential design: MINI is creating China's first co-living project

2018-03-08T13:49:00-05:00

With its newest project, the MINI Living building in Shanghai, the car brand is continuing its venture into the urban living sector. The rental market in big cities across the world is an interesting addition to the list of urban challenges that it seeks to address with its MINI Living program.

Image: MINI

"MINI LIVING will become a home for singles, sharers and families on short, medium-term and extended tenancies," a statement by the BMW-owned car(ish) brand explains the co-living concept. "The design and therefore the character of the apartment interiors is international, modern and clean, and features references to the history of Shanghai. However, living in an apartment that occupies only a small surface area in no way means going without. Anything that doesn’t fit inside the apartments can be accommodated in the adjacent spaces."

WeLive isn't growing fast enough to keep up with WeWork's $16 billion valuation

2016-08-11T17:27:00-04:00

Perhaps the most notable business line to suffer from slow growth is WeLive, which offers young renters fully furnished apartments and a communal atmosphere. The two inaugural locations opened in lower Manhattan and Crystal City, Va., earlier this year in converted office buildings. But the costs of converting those spaces proved high given the extensive remodeling needed... Now the company is aiming to put WeLive locations mainly in newly built developments that can be custom designed.

More news from under the WeWork umbrella:

London revives co-housing

2016-06-15T10:28:00-04:00

As rents spiral in London, one company is proposing a solution. The Collective is a new block of apartments that acts like a giant shared house: small private bedrooms with communal laundry, kitchens, spa, cinema and workspaces … and some covert matchmaking by the managers. Our series on the global revolution in urban living goes inside the modern-day boarding house

Read related articles here:

The kibbutz, rebranded for Silicon Valley

2016-05-09T17:37:00-04:00

[Common is] a version of communal living that suggests tech utopia in its ultimate test case: with Nest thermometers, and Casper mattresses, and a house Slack channel, so you can see whether anyone else wants Seamless without having to yell down the hall. [...] As a business proposition, rental real estate wouldn’t necessarily seem like it has much to do with tech; but as a mentality, co-living is pure Silicon Valley — it is life rendered frictionless.

Related on Archinect:

Co-living + 'nomadism': Roam wants you to sign a lease to live around the world

2016-05-05T12:58:00-04:00

If you can afford the airfare, it's getting easier to be a digital nomad. Roam, a new network of co-living spaces, offers a lease that lets you continually move: After a couple of weeks or months in Madrid, you can head to Miami, or Ubud, Bali. By 2017, the startup plans to have 8-10 locations around the world. These aren't designed as places for vacations. Instead, it's an alternative way to think about home for "location-independent" people who can work remotely.

"Residents each have their own private bedroom and bathroom, but they also have access to a coworking space and shared communal areas. The point is to meet as many people as possible."

Their website includes copy like, "A new way of living: Sign one lease. Live around the world," and, "Show up and find community everywhere." And high-speed wifi is guaranteed!

No place like home, eh? For more on the changing landscape of domesticity today, check out some related Archinect coverage:

WeWork + Airbnb = PodShare? New live-work space emerges in Los Angeles

2016-03-29T13:06:00-04:00

PodShare's site is laden with millennial-friendly tech buzzwords, like the sharing economy, pod culture, nomadic freelancers, access not ownership, and even “Podestrians,” the company's name for guests, each of whom get profiles on its website. “We’re creating a social network with a physical address,” said Beck. “Our open-floor model offers the highest rate of collisions for social travelers. We do not identify with hostels—we are a co-living space or a live-work community.”

Related on Archinect:

ARExA to renovate WeWork's first co-living project on Wall Street

2015-10-21T18:28:00-04:00

The tower, owned by Rudin Management, currently has 260,000 square feet of floorspace that counts towards zoning, and of that, 133,000 square feet will become residential, resulting in 205 new apartments. The remaining 127,000 square feet will stay commercial. [...] 110 Wall Street will be WeWork’s first foray into residential development [...] The inclusion of Class B dwelling units, which denote transient housing, likely signals living options will range from communal to private.

According to CurbedNY, ARExA will head design on the renovation of WeWork's first residential project under its co-living offshoot, WeLive. Completion date is currently slated for March 2017.

WeWork is also hiring multiple positions in New York at this very moment. Check out their listings here:

WeWork: openings for Interior Design Lead; Project Architect; Building Information Specialist

UPDATE: an earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to FXFOWLE as the designer for the renovation, referring to an earlier version of the same news posted to CurbedNY.

More on WeWork and its residential foray, WeLive:

More details emerge about WeWork's residential endeavor WeLive
WeWork moves into residential development with WeLive
Working out of the Box: Miguel McKelvey, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at WeWork