While the best architects together with science fiction writers imagine how in the near future we will live in boxes controlled by artificial intelligence, today the new generation has a completely different attitude to the choice of housing. Subscription house: how the new generation chooses housing in the post-luxury era.
The myth of the beginning of the decade that millennials do not buy housing should be reformulated: “they do not buy the standard formula” square meters at a specific address”. Housing remains the most popular form of investment and accounts for the largest share of the global economic asset – 75% of all real estate. The figure is voiced by Rainier de Graaff, co-founder of the research studio AMO and partner of the architectural bureau OMA at the FFM-2019. At the same time, it is becoming less accessible to the majority, which raises the question of social architecture and the rejection of private spaces in favor of public spaces. Generational focus has shifted to travel, education, spiritual experiences, development, and experience. All this changed the idea of how a modern home should be.
Today, the design of a modern house coincides with the ideas that architects-constructivists voiced at the beginning of the last century. The house becomes a function, so the choice of the buyer increasingly depends on the rhythm of life and vision of the world than on income. And the main role is played by the community – people who share common values and responsibilities. What you own (everything can be rented) is not so important as what you do and what lifestyle you choose.
Home as a service to a better world
The gaming industry has taught the millennials generation that a better world can be programmed, and the power of horizontal connections and urban protests has proven that it can stand up for corporations (the undeveloped Google campus in Berlin Kreuzberg) and governments (mass riots in Hong Kong, Paris, Santiago de Chile and further everywhere). So even in an industry as slow as residential construction, evolution is taking place.
Coliving R50 is an example of how architects without a developer built a house in Berlin, whose residents saved about 30% of the cost of buying a house. This is the territory of respect for resources, respect, cooperation and attempts to create universal values at the design stage. So the residents have chosen the same decoration materials for the apartments, agreed on the area of the common living room, library, exploitable roof and even a common laundry.
In the Scandinavian countries, which have long become pioneers in the field of “cohabiting”, families with children often prefer to live in homes where there are people of retirement age – many of them are happy to look after the children. And in Barnet, in the north of London, a 25-apartment Owch house was built for ladies older than 50 years – in addition to common spaces, ladies also support each other in difficult life situations (this is prescribed in the rules of the house).
In real estate projects of the “business” class and higher, from one to several floors of urban infrastructure, services and retail, which are used not only by residents, but also by citizens, can be included. Separate parking lots and entrances to the private part of the house, public areas where you can celebrate a birthday or have a party are created for residents. Own dispensers for delivery services are often integrated in the lobby of the house, and the management company can take on the functions of cleaning the apartment and delivering food.
In Russia, a similar model was followed during the construction of the creative community “Village” and cottages in Bolotov. Village.
House by subscription
Millennials are accustomed to rapid and constant changes, they value time and look for transforming experiences and adventures, many choose the digital-nomads lifestyle. Getting clothes, food, subscription news is a common thing, now it’s the turn of housing. In addition to a place to sleep and work, guests also get the keys to the city – access to local communities, insider places and useful contacts. In addition to European Cohabs and American Common, the Soho House community hotels with expansion from Mumbaf to Chicago or Ace Hotel, which conquered the USA and Canada, and soon Japan, also claim this niche.
The mix of an apartment and a hotel is a marker of the time of a quick world. The house has everything by subscription – from fitness to a restaurant, from co-working to an office where you can invite your hairdresser, manicurist and pilates trainer. And a very small private space of the bedroom and bathroom, where you can retire. In London’s Old Oak, residents of co-living make up a leisure program together – lectures on mindfulness and longevity, concerts of favorite groups on the roof, master classes and joint film screenings.
For such unaffordable cities as London or San Francisco, this is also a way not to stand in an endless queue to view the apartment and not to look for guarantors. Almost all co-living and co-households select applicants so that the interests and ideas about cohabitation of tenants coincide. A similar trend is observed in people who retired in large economies, primarily the United States and Europe. Choose a community for retirement, whose members love Nordic walking, are responsible for nature, engage in a specific sport or have similar hobbies, even via Pinterest.
Colivium company plans to implement a similar model in Moscow by developing CoLoft project on Tulskaja metro station.
A house as an investment in a city attraction
Houses from well-known architects almost immediately enter property into the status of “trophy”, but experiments with space and functions are of a different nature and also claim to be a cultural phenomenon. So the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels in the VIA 57 West project rethought what a skyscraper in Manhattan might look like – he coined the name courtscraper for him (combining the words courtyard and skyscraper). In addition to general fitness, a swimming pool, a grill zone, a nursery, a cinema and a library, the architect created a smaller copy of the Central Park in the courtyard of the house and persuaded the developer to make 20% of the apartments affordable for purchase by the middle class.
One of the main European projects was Markthal in Rotterdam from the bureau MVRDV – the old market was covered with an arch, which housed housing and apartments. In addition to the tourist Mecca, it is also a place that keeps the memory of the place and is the unofficial heart of the city.
The most expensive house in New York at the moment – project 443 Tribeca – has become a stronghold of bohemia due to the private atmosphere and history of the house. The building of the former binding factory was completely reconstructed, now a hammam, a garden, a roof terrace, a 22-meter indoor pool, a children’s playroom, a fitness center and private fitness studios are accessible to residents for whom the idea and the possibility of privacy are important. Among the residents of the house are Justin Timberlake, Jake Gyllenhaal and Meg Ryan.
Moscow was one of the first to bet on the community with a project of urban Cameo villas on Mayakovskaya.
