In March 2024, in response to the housing crisis, MVRDV published the Co-Living Design Study, created in collaboration with developer HUB and sustainable and impact investor Bridges Fund Management. The study researches and catalogues a range of typologies to create new opportunities for this emerging way of living that promotes community, flexibility, and shared spaces. Following its release and the enthusiastic response it received from across the architecture and housing sectors, MVRDV has now made the publication available for download here.

Image © MVRDV

This Co-living Design study, commissioned by HUB and Bridges and created by MVRDV, acknowledges shared living’s long history while adding an array of new ideas suitable for implementation today. At the heart of the co-living model is the idea of communal spaces, from shared facilities providing access to equipment far beyond what would ordinarily be available in an individual home, to creating natural opportunities for residents and visitors to meet, form relationships, and build communities. The study shows how the co-living model allows buildings to serve the needs of communities of different shapes and sizes through strategies such as providing a guest room for visitors to incorporating event spaces, gardens, or co-working rooms to deliver for the broader community.

Bounded by the concept of ‘social spaciousness’, which introduces residents to neighbours through accidental encounters, the study offers examples for both adapting existing buildings and spaces, and developing new, sustainable, resilient structures. The fifteen typologies presented comprise a selection of diverse arrangements of homes and communal spaces. Based on repetitive volumes for ease and affordability of construction, each also supports a wide array of floorplans. All corridors within these typologies become the “streets” of the building, creating new functions for previously often empty, dark, low-ceilinged spaces such as sports, libraries, and shop windows, and making them social. 

Image © MVRDV

In a further demonstration of the flexibility of community living, the study assesses the feasibility of not simply delivering new builds, but also how existing buildings such as vacant, low-quality office buildings and stranded assets can be transformed while preserving the character of the original structure. This approach is crucial in addressing the housing crisis and the climate crisis simultaneously, as transforming buildings releases significantly less carbon than demolishing and replacing an existing structure. 

The book concludes by extending the boundaries of the study, envisaging a future in which cities are threatened by the effects of climate change, whether rendered inhospitable in hot summers or subject to flooding or biodiversity loss. These future risks are turned into opportunities, while delivering extraordinary buildings. From vertical farm cities to autarkic towers which are wholly self-sufficient and independent, and from biodiversity towers to vertical 15-minute cities which flips the existing horizontal concept, the challenges tomorrow’s cities face instead become a platform for progress.

Download the Co-Living Design Study here.