At a recent investor presentation we received the following question after presenting Noiascape:

“I get the macro position guys, I hear the same thing every week, but what influences Noiascape?”

We replied:

1. The 3000 parks and green spaces that make up 18% of London’s surface and define the character and experience of the city.
2. The research and design process that led to the development of the Sony Walkman - the first low cost personal stereo released in 1979 that eventually sold 400 million units. It changed the way we listened to music and is considered to have increased walking and running in American cities by 30%, between 1987-1997.
3. The UK Public Libraries Act of 1850 that allowed local authorities to raise funds through local tax to provide universal access to knowledge and literature. This act created a national network of civic buildings that allowed informal learning to be integrated into civic life.

In London, in parallel with your private space, you have access to a network of green public spaces across the city, and you share these spaces with 8.98 million people. You can work, mingle, run, gather and sunbathe in them. They are flexible, open and free; no one person owns them. They are integral to our urban experience. Through taxation we contribute to the provision and operation of these parks. These parks are an infrastructure that is accessible to the entire city and create a stage for the experience of London, defining part of our urban culture.

The technology used in the Sony Walkman was available since the 1960s. The ability to conceive of music as being mobile arrived later. Sony photographically mapped rituals of the everyday, and this revealed new possibilities for the way people, space and technology interact. Music typically was consumed in the home. The photographic study revealed those in-between urban spaces we move through - streets, buses, trains and parks. The analysis allowed a perception shift - how can we make music mobile, allow it to be experienced while moving through the city? The Walkman was the start of a new revolution in personal mobile consumer technology.

In comparison, the real estate development process is often uncertain, but those undertaking innovative development have to be serious about the process of looking at uncertainty. The fragmented development structures common in current coliving delivery will not fuel the innovation needed to deliver the next generation of coliving buildings. Innovation is needed to transfer existing, established rental markets to coliving buildings, and transcend the current narrow conversations fixated on minimum size. These conversations have diverted energy from the structural opportunity provided by the coliving typology.

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Noiascape is an integrated organisation, working at the interface between design, development and the operation of space. Through constant observation and dialogue, we are able to assess how changes in a member’s life starts to inform how spatial organisations might need to adapt. In 2016, Noiascape started a research project with existing members. We wanted to understand where members spent their time in a 24-hour cycle. It was an examination of the rituals we all repeat everyday - washing, eating, working and resting. Its purpose was to analyse how much private space is needed and if the private space could be re-structured to respond to modern rituals.

Difference was emerging. About 50% of members commuted to work; 2 hours or more were spent traveling from home to work everyday. 10-14 hours at work, and maybe only 2-3 hours awake in their private space. 35-50% of their income was being spent on a private space that was often used for 17% of the day (excluding sleep). The other 50% of members were being affected by emerging work practices and communications technology. Digital networks and central servers were allowing this group to work flexibly, independent of a particular spatial location or time. This group could work and live more fluidly, freed from the hierarchy of time, and set working patterns. They were living, working and socially interacting all in parallel rather than in separate spaces that were laterally dispersed across the city.

Commuting time was equivalent to 12 working weeks a year. Private spaces within rental flats were redundant in some cases for 83% of the day. Land and build costs were typically £600 per square foot. A single-person 37m2 unit had a land and build capital cost of £238,956 per person, and a 50m2 unit was costing £323,340. London Plan compliant homes were expensive to build and therefore rent. These homes absorbed significant capital to develop and then holding an operational phase, while being used at very low intensity.

For those that were working at home (pre-COVID-19), existing spatial organisations did not support the way they were working and living in parallel. This group needed open, fluid interconnected space. The structural changes in work patterns were informing the need for a new spatial typology that could support working within the building where you live.

The redundancy of use focusses the question of why a single person who rents needs 37-50 m2 of private space to live in a city, particularly as the majority of renters are ‘pre-family’. Making these spaces 100% private limits the opportunity of land and the impact of the capital being used to develop that land. Could the capital used to build private residential spaces be partly re-directed to create more shared and public spaces? How could these spaces respond more directly to changing work patterns and extend the concept of home? By engaging in these questions we can reveal strategies to create more impact and growth with the same amount of capital.

For Noiascape, creating spaces that facilitate social interaction is not a compensation for more efficient private space; it is a new spatial typology that we need to invent to evolve the culture of urban experience. It can replace the erosion of local everyday public spaces, the places where incidental everyday exchange takes place, the spaces that allow us to connect and interact with others. Recent months have shown that the most important function of urban space is the capacity to facilitate social interaction. The opportunity of coliving is to create social interaction as an everyday ritual that is integrated throughout the spatial and operational organisation.

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Macro Thinking

If we start to consider space as a finite resource in urban centres, the London Plan should support strategies that can create density and use private space more efficiently. This will allow the city to grow sustainably without lateral expansion. If the London Plan was to support strategies that deliver density and provide an increased publicness in mixed-use buildings, we could see a fundamentally different living typology emerge. This requires macro thinking, strategy and policy.

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Space as a finite resource

Space in London is a finite resource. London has a land mass of 1,579 km. Greater London Authority (GLA) intelligence projects London’s population will increase to 10 million by 2030 from the current 8.9 million, an increase of 1.1 million people. If 30% of the 1.1 million expanded population rent, there will be a need to accommodate 366,000 new people in rental spaces. If we apply current London Plan space standards, there will be a need to create 13,542,000 m2 of new rental space.

Given the limitation on the supply of land, we have to densify the city. In combination, we need to differentiate the space standards for rent and for sale – for pre-family and family requirements. If we consider space as a limited resource, as we have with energy use in buildings, we may question more carefully how much is needed to support urban living. If the planning process also assessed the performance of the capital to create social and cultural growth, the purpose of development would be reconsidered. It has been 16 years since the London Plan was introduced. While London Plan Policy H16 (formerly H18) is an interesting invite, it is clear that local authorities are shy about engaging in the dialogue. Developers need to give vision to H16, to reposition the conversation away from the limitations of discussing size and start to understand space as a resource that should be deployed to activate social and cultural growth.

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Control systems

The post-war Town and Country Planning Act 1947 defined the basis for the contemporary planning system. At its heart was a nationalisation of development rights. It was plan-led and control-focused. It proposed functional separation of uses, from central business districts to manufacturing zones to housing zones - a modern technocracy with no regard for the city as an experienced condition. The city as a collage of history, people, culture, music and food, all jumbled together.

Communications technology, and more recently COVID-19 has altered this concept of the city. Now we are working, living, consuming, learning and communicating in parallel. The activities we carry out in space are fluid and interchangeable. This transition completely changes the way we use and relate to space. It makes a planning system focused on controlling use and space redundant. The new Town & Country Planning (Use Classes) Order - Class E, is the first step in recognising that fluidity and interchangeability is needed between commercial use classes. This will allow commercial space to respond quickly to changes in demand and allow commercial space to provide multiple uses in one location.
This flexibility can allow co-working, retail and cultural space to co-exist in one location.

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Re-shaping the concept of home

Convincing planners that communications technology will entirely re-shape residential space and that Policy H16 is capable of revolutionising the concept of living often gets met with a roll of the eyes. Noiascape has learned to take planners on a journey to open up the thinking and allow them to actively shape the opportunity of H16.

The concept of home as conceived in the London Plan is private, self contained and owned. As a space, physically and experientially, it stops at your front door. For my 23-year-old brother the concept of owning a private flat is meaningless as he has already worked out that his educational choice will never create the income needed to own. This opens his consideration of where and how he might live. Technology networks and flexible employment erode the need to be fixed in one location; this changes his perception of how and where he might live. COVID-19 and lockdowns have amplified this condition.

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Re-distribution

With considered design a single person can live in less than 37 m2. We have modelled and now built various configurations and have found that 25 m2 is optimal for a self contained single-person living space.

A 37 m2 unit at £600 psf costs £238,956 to produce (land and construction costs). If the private unit is reduced to 25 m2, the land and construction costs reduce to £161,400 psf, allowing £77,556 to be diverted to densifying the number of units and creating a range of shared and semi-public spaces in the building. At the scale of 100 units, £7.75 million can be redistributed to create more living space or an expanded provision of shared space. The cost of servicing the capital (debt and equity) relative to each unit also reduces. For illustration, a 37 m2 unit at a cost of £238,956 taking a nominal rate of 5% will cost £11,947 per unit per year. The 25 m2 unit at 5% will cost £8,070 per year. Through density and thoughtful design, the opportunity is to reduce rental costs and restructure the relationship between private space and shared space.

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Density

It is not just about more people in one location, but also the impact of those people in one location. Where higher local daily densities have been created during lockdown, we have seen the positive impact on local areas. The opportunity of hyper-local development is to increase local economic growth, support independent business, increase social interaction and create demand for a range of new local services. These services could include arts, culture, local learning and training, thus producing a renewed local publicness.

Coliving as a typology could be the catalyst to create this new density while providing the shared spaces to host this new type of public engagement. It could also support the creation of the cultural programming and content experienced in the shared spaces through working with local emergent cultural producers. When connected to a local community, coliving buildings can facilitate the interaction between an established community and a new community.

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Coliving Buildings can and will deliver growth and innovation

Like the Sony Walkman, the technology to develop coliving buildings exists. We are not presented with the need to invent a lift before you can build tall buildings. Instead we have to change the established perception of home; from a mono-use, self-contained private space to a private space integrated within a network of semi-public shared spaces. Suddenly home is connected to a network of people, community and experiences. Your home extends beyond your front door.

At an urban scale, coliving buildings provide two principle opportunities: they intensify density and allow living, working and social spaces to interact in one location. London’s historic residential growth has relied on an expansion of transport networks to release new land, primarily train networks. The next wave of growth will be defined by a need to maximise and densify existing land without the reliance on transport networks that use fossil fuel. This growth will require new buildings that can choreograph living, working and social interaction in one location – providing open and fluid fields of shared space. Coliving buildings can be the spaces that deliver this growth and more.