What is a 'common house'?

The common house is the heart and hub of every cohousing community and ours is no exception.

Cohousing can be defined as

people living together in neighbourhoods designed for community interaction and personal privacy.

In nearly all cohousing projects, most of those community interactions take place in the common house – where most of the shared resources are gathered. Typically, the common house includes a kitchen and shared dining space, a laundry, post room and guest rooms.

As well as these, ChaCo plans to have a play room and workshop – and until we get round to building ourselves a shed for the workshop, we’re going to have to be creative with Transformer™ style guest rooms that magically morph with a few deft moves to allow other uses.

Our common house occupies the 150m² ground floor space beneath three of our 2-bed duplexes next to the car park at the north of our site. It’s designed to be within easy reach of all the houses and flats across the shared garden.