Description

In 1969, Centraal Wonen, a Dutch association for collective living, started funding and developing its own collective living projects.[1] One of the first projects they realized is the Tanthof Cohousing Settlement in Delft. Completed in 1981, the residential property not only offers shared facilities, the architectural concept also deeply shifts private living space, primarily including not individual apartments or housing units, but groups and clusters arranged around communal living spaces. The housing concept was created at the initiative of architect Flip Krabbendam, in cooperation with the future residents. Through the participatory process, residents were able to influence spatial distribution and floor plan layouts. The initiators of the Tanthof were not motivated solely by self-interest but also deliberately sought to dissolve family structures that they considered isolating — and developed interior architectures that supported this goal.

Private rooms, groups, and clusters divide the interior structure into three different spatial and social levels. The smallest units are the 171 private rooms, some with their own kitchenette or bathroom, which are divided into 13 groups and located along extended access areas, where the associated communal areas such as shared kitchens, additional bathrooms, and open dining and lounge areas can also be found. One group is formed around each shared kitchen, with the groups then creating four clusters. Each cluster has additional common areas such as a garden, laundry room, bicycle room, and hobby room.[2] In this way, private and collectively used spaces are distributed throughout the entire settlement in an intricate network. Additional shared infrastructure is concentrated in one building section, including an in-house bar, a project room, and shared workplaces, all of which have a high degree of public access. Since access to the individual living spaces requires passing through the collective circulation area and the shared living areas, a high level of social control is unavoidable at Tanthof Cohousing Settlement. However, the individual groups and clusters create opportunities to use living spaces throughout the entire settlement. This makes it possible, for example, for young people to gather in a cluster farther away from their family.

Living in groups and clusters instead of apartments means that the resident community of the Tanthof Cohousing Settlement is constantly fluctuating. In the beginning, around 30 children and 100 adults lived at Tanthof. While the initial target group was families, in recent years families have been increasingly replaced by young single persons between 20 and 45 years of age, although care is now taken to ensure that students do not constitute the majority of residents.

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Originally published in: Susanne Schmid, Dietmar Eberle, Margrit Hugentobler (eds.), A History of Collective Living. Forms of Shared Housing, Birkhäuser, 2019. Translation by Word Up!, LLC, edited for Building Types Online.