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-living is certainly nothing new, though its modern forms are a clear departure from the communes and back-to-the-land movement of the 60s. "It's not radical," says Naismith. "We are quite tentative," adds Aimer. "But we have all been very welcoming."

With rents on the rise, Aimer goes on to comment the growing need to design homes that can accommodate changing family dynamics, which has become a common part of the design brief for a lot of clients, she says. Economic circumstances and demographic shifts have altered the demands on domestic spaces, resulting in calls for flexible units and new solutions, of which the Twin House design by Scarlet Architects is one.