Collective Variable: A Hybrid Co-Sharing Experiment

In a post-tech, post-pandemic, and possibly post-car era, the shift toward remote-working and learning meant that people in the suburbs are spending a longer time than ever in a domestic space. With 86% of Australians living in areas considered suburban or exurban, suburbs need to be flexible and adaptable. The suburbs are predicated on people taking care of their own lot. What if "their own lot" is expanded to include shared and co-owned infrastructures and spaces?

​

Situated in Melbourne's Brunswick West, this project suggests a new way of living for the Australian Suburb. The organisation of each bedroom operates in an open infrastructure through the characterisation of specific arrangements of plug-in furniture. These assemblages of small loosely-joined elements employ a system of timber connections and casters to allow easy implementation, rotation, sliding, and modification of elements, encouraging sustainable settlement and production rather than transient consumption. There is a deliberate intent for co-living spaces to become naturally public, calling for the need to expand the building in the future to create more private spaces to live, breathe and work.

​

As a toolkit to empower and create friendships among the residents, a residency form was designed to allow residents to pick their bedrooms, introduce common cooperative structures and the concept of democratic community governance to manage and facilitate this re-imagined collective suburbia.