Platform 31 – CoWonen Interview

This is an English translation of this article by Susan van Klaveren from Platform 31. – june 2024

A world to win – Base principles for architecture that facilitates community engagement


Seniors are seeking new housing arrangements where they can live with others and have social interaction. This can combat loneliness and contribute to health and vitality. It is therefore advisable to consider this need in the design of homes, routes, and communal spaces. Both housing associations and architects are looking for thoughtful designs that facilitate social interaction in clustered housing forms.


Tijmen Kuyper and Philip Krabbendam from CoWonen, a consultancy for designing collective housing, assert that there is still much to be gained in the design of clustered housing projects. Kuyper states, “It is essential to understand that social interaction is much more than simply providing a meeting space with planned activities. Architects are often still insufficiently experienced in designing for social interaction in clustered housing forms. We see that architecture courses are gradually starting to address this, but most architects are not trained in it.” Housing associations are also searching for solutions. With the mandate to realise 40,000 clustered homes for seniors, various questions arise: what should be included in a programme of requirements? And how can opportunities for social interaction be improved in existing buildings?

Six design principles for community

Krabbendam and Kuyper established six basic principles to help people in drafting a programme of requirements for a residential building aimed at an engaged community. “Consider, for example, psychological ownership. If you feel that a space is partly yours, you will take care of it,” says Kuyper. “Another principle is privacy: if there is no place where you can safely retreat, then community life doesn’t work. You can’t be ‘on stage’ all the time. The principles can also help in analysing why interaction in an existing building is not taking place as hoped.”

  • Socio Spatial Scales: Collective and private are not binary principles but exist on a spectrum of social scales. Not every activity fits at every scale level. The following principles vary per scale:
  • Privacy: Privacy is about control over publicity, and if it is not giving enough attention in the design, people will completely withdraw: the privacy paradox.
  • Psychological Ownership: During the design process and in finalized building, the residents should be allowed to take real ownership. People can take social and physical care of the spaces.
  • Spontaneous Interaction: Casual encounters are often taken for granted. Good design of routes and transition zones is much more important for this than a designated ‘meeting room’.
  • Planned Interaction: Programmed meetings with a specific agenda. For this, a high-quality meeting space can indeed be meaningful.
  • Social Continuity: Good relationships take a lot of time to develop. If there is a high turnover of residents, caring relationships don’t have the time to develop.


There are many small and big patterns across many aspects like design, organizational, financial etc. that may hinder or contribute to these community enhancing principles.

Work with social scale levels

In his dissertation ‘Engagement,’ Krabbendam delves deeper into social scale levels. “In a building, a gradation of scales is desirable; this also prevents a stark division between private and public. These scale levels enable individuals, clusters, and the entire project to thrive. It embeds the individual within the social context. What often goes wrong in developing shared spaces is their size. For instance, having sixteen people share a kitchen or fifty households use a laundry room often doesn’t work. It’s important to determine the required level of intimacy for each activity and the appropriate scale level. At the same time, working with multiple levels means people must divide their time among private, cluster, project, and neighbourhood activities. There’s a limit to how many levels can enhance social cohesion. If there are too many, people have to spread their time across too many scales.”

Circulation is communication

In his projects, Krabbendam pays a lot of attention to walking routes. “Daily routes should pass by places where people spend time. Through a window or an open door, you should be able to see what’s happening in the space, so you feel invited to step in. A community room on the top floor might offer a great view, but it doesn’t work if there’s no other reason to go there. Ensure that communal spaces are daily routes. This can also be achieved by placing a necessary space, such as the laundry room, next to it.” Kuyper adds, “Social interaction should be a choice. Design the complex so that people can also go directly to their homes without social contact. We call this the ‘not-now route.’ But people almost always take the shortest route, so it is essential that the social route, is the quickest one!”

Transitionzones

One important consideration in designing for social interaction is the transition zones between social scale levels. “If transition zones are not designed, people will try to create them themselves by placing a bench or plants in front of their living room windows for example. If that’s not allowed, they’ll often keep their curtains permanently closed,” says Kuyper. “We see that the transition zone is very important: 80 percent of informal social contacts take place here. It is also an important place where the identity of the residents can be expressed.” Krabbendam adds, “In the design, you can shape this by making the transition zone between the house and, for example, the street, one to two meters deep. If the front garden is deeper, people are more likely to place bushes or another high barrier. If the front garden is shallower, a bench won’t fit. On a gallery, the margins are narrower. To prevent people from claiming too much space and avoid conflict, you can make the zone visible by using different materials.” The appropriation of the transition zone often leads to discussion. Strict fire safety regulations, for example, do not always allow the placement of benches, doormats, and similar items in corridors, which can be detrimental to social interaction.

Let residents participate: the importance of codesign

Kuyper and Krabbendam emphasize the importance of involving future residents from the early planning phase on. Krabbendam states, “We often see that residents are only involved when the design is almost final, or not at all. At that point, it is difficult to make adjustments, and residents do not feel like ‘owners’ of the plan, which can lead to collective spaces not functioning well.” Housing cooperatives, where a residents’ association takes over many concerns and risks from social housing associations, so called beheercoöperaties, have proven to be a successful formula in The Netherlands. When people are involved early in the process, some may still drop out during the planning stage. According to Kuyper, this is not a problem: “Even if people drop out during the design process, their input is valuable. They pass on their sense of ownership and ideas, eventually leading to variation in housing design.”

“This is important, because a home that is suitable for everyone,
is interesting to no one.”



The future residents and the architect of The Bonte Hulst, a soon to be build housing cooperation in Amsterdam, during a CoWonen session.