Context
Maryam Khatibi's article in the Journal of Housing and the Built Environment (2022) studies Hallenwohnen ("hall dwelling"), part of the Zollhaus settlement in central Zurich โ the Kalkbreite housing cooperative's follow-up project, in use since January 2021 and described as the first legal hall cohousing arrangement in Switzerland.
The Setting
Hallenwohnen is a large open hall with shared basic infrastructure and mobile residential towers โ "rollable" private spaces โ offering affordable, self-managed and self-built collaborative living and co-working.
Method
A qualitative case study: face-to-face semi-structured interviews, mainly with three residents acting as representatives of the community, plus on-site observation, spatial investigation and document analysis, framed by the concept of collaborative housing.
Findings
The collective spaces' socio-spatial potential is activated by the micro-community's participatory intentions and the setting's intended mix of functions. Living as one collective household, using hybrid spaces for several purposes and activating the intermediate spaces between private and shared areas make the spaces capable of participation and lead to optimal use of housing space. Constraints and conflicts, which prompt residents to renegotiate how collective spaces are used, also help the community reach collective solutions. A bottom-up initiative such as this is helped by the long-term planning and top-down support of Zurich's cooperative housing model.
Note
Only the abstract is openly available here; the study reports no quantitative outcomes on cost, energy or satisfaction.