In 2007, Apple released the first iPhone. It had a understanding of the social experiences that resonate 2-megapixel camera and 16GB of storage. In 2008, the iPhone 3G included GPS technology and the AppStore. Around this time, Apple realised the phone would extend beyond mere verbal communication.

Critical to Apple’s success is the integration of hardware and software through a constant culture of innovation. The iPhone 12 Pro has a 12-megapixel triple lens camera - the first ever phone camera to use Dolby Vision - allowing 4k Dolby video with 30 frames per second, making it a virtual production and consumption centre. The depth and quality of digital imagery creates desire and belief at the same moment, convincing the viewer to consume before the real space is experienced.

The ability to influence commercial exchange online is facilitating a revolution in renting. Successful coliving brands will need to innovate at a hardware level (built space) and software level (the content and experience of space) to engage an international market that is accessible through digital networks.

Operators with integrated structures will be best positioned to evolve the typology. These operators facilitate a dialogue between software and hardware, creating constant dialogue that drives feedback and synthesis. The knowledge and data gained from observing the everyday operational life of a building will inform future design development and reveal new income streams from in-brand services. Operational efficiency will follow, as well as a closer understanding of the social experiences that resonate with mid-stay rental users.

The ability to tune the feel and culture of a coliving building will encourage the retention of members and drive higher occupancy rates, which is needed to grow a sustainable business platform. Traditional, fragmented development structures will not enable the innovation needed to evolve the typology. It will require a continuous interaction between design, development and operations.

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International markets

Often transferring from another London apartment, Noiascape’s first tenants typically visited the space as part of their decision-making process. Seeing the space and chatting was an important part of making a decision. 5 years on, 90% of tenants are coming to Noiascape spaces from international cities. They view our spaces via video tour and make instant decisions. They can referenced and secured in 4 hours. Noiascape has evolved its system to communicate directly with the customer. Brands that are design-led and can articulate the culture of their shared spaces will connect with a visually literate audience.

A recent report from CBRE shows there are 2.7 million renters in London, with 30% of all households in London being rented. Of those 2.7 million renters, coliving spaces currently equate to less than 0.1% of the rental market. JLL’s Micro Solutions report shows that 1.1 million existing house sharers are housed in HMOs, typically in 100-year-old terraced houses. Coliving is at a pivotal moment where it has the opportunity to engage an emerging international audience and an existing national market.

Current interest in coliving is driven by the imagined possibility of the typology. The next evolution of coliving buildings will need to invest in design, innovation and technology platforms to exceed the current imagined possibility. Creating integrated structures, if adopted in coliving, can encourage wider change in the real estate industry.

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Attract and retain members for the mid- to long-term

Nokia dominated the phone market when the iPhone was introduced. Now Nokia is invisible. Apple extended the concept of a phone by providing a media and consumption centre connected to the App Store. With coliving, the rental market is already established with customers paying 42% of their salary on rent in London (according to the English Housing Survey). The opportunity is to innovate a new typology that elevates above a simple evolution of student accommodation and moves beyond the current limited offer of existing rental models. This requires an act of design and communication, connecting the hardware and software of coliving buildings to provide private and shared spaces that create a new type of living experience. Coliving could become the offline equivalent of the App Store.

With a network across London, Berlin and Europe’s other urban centres, coliving companies could evolve into a modern civic typology that rivals the impact of the library on the city. These new networks of coliving buildings could provide homes for 10 years of a renter’s life, supporting the transition from education to family life and post-family life. Combined with education and employment uses, coliving buildings could be instrumental in attracting and retaining talent in urban centres. Across a network of communities, coliving buildings can become a critical infrastructure that supports the social, economic and cultural growth of the economy.

Noiascape’s objective is to retain members for 10 years, by providing a network of spaces and services that can support the life of a person, from education through to their early career. You might start out
in a studio, and as your life changes, Noiascape can provide a range of apartment types. Coliving buildings offering a range of sizes can encourage a mixed demographic. The postgraduate can mix with the post-family member, allowing the possibility of intergenerational exchange.

Mixed demographics would respond to recent research from Paragon Bank that revealed the number of 55-64 year olds in the UK with an Assured Tenancy has increased by 118% from 10 years ago. Renters aged over 65 grew by 93%. Coliving can be evolved to engage this demographic, creating a typology that resists mono-culture and mono-demographics.

Despite a perception that renting is a short-term option, the English Housing Survey shows that the mean tenancy is 4.1 years with 25% of tenants renting for 5-10 years. This retention, combined with mixed demographics, presents an opportunity for coliving operators to curate and develop long-term communities. Investors are starting to recognise that securing tenants for a significant part of their life makes sense. As more choice emerges, coliving brands will need to adopt longer term strategies with a focus on building a culture of community. This will require them to communicate purpose and build an emotional connection with a diverse audience. The operators that build connections will be those that can offer more than narratives built around individual consumption. This requires a perspective change from residents and operators, transitioning from ‘what do I get’ to ‘what can I contribute and be a part of’. Those brands that facilitate contribution will retain tenants and be sustainable - those that grow new income streams, within the brand and beyond the rent, will be both sustainable and highly valuable.

Operations is the software of the rental experience. This approach requires a new skill set that can oscillate between the technical knowledge needed to understand mechanical and communications networks, while also being sensitive to the ways social interaction can be encouraged in shared spaces. Like the experience of cities, difference defines experience. It is the contrast between things - the energy that is created when differences meet - that produces the strongest social encounter. Operators will need to cultivate an approach that resists consistency of experience and embraces difference.

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Operational approaches

For Noiascape, operational strategy is like a collage that is kept in constant motion. The Noiascape Manifesto underpins what we believe and is a constant reference. Point 10 of our Manifesto states ‘Assume Everything is Incomplete’. This point drives the 4 key areas of our current operational interest:

1. Create spaces that visually and culturally engage with an international audience. This engagement is typically first experienced through digital communications.

2. Choreograph in-building experiences and content that is authentic and engages members over a 6-24-month lifespan. This content should respond to the culture that surrounds the building, facilitating social interaction with local people. Curating content should allow a collage of difference; this will ensure members encounter content that sits outside of their normal preferences.

3. Design and operate spaces that facilitate everyday incidental encounters.

4. Assess energy and life cycle costs, and create strategies to operate buildings more efficiently.

Noiascape works with a range of makers to design one-off components of furniture to give identity to each interior. In doing so, we support emerging young designers and the creative culture that defines the UK. We use research to inform how everyday rituals can be re-structured to create new meaning and experience. Our beds at our High Street House location were developed in response to observing how tenants used their laptops in bed to work, learn and watch films. If the largest block of time in the private space is spent in bed, then we wanted to design a bed that acts as a landscape for modern life.

We fundamentally see coliving as a typology that can support people in meeting and interacting. We structure shared spaces around food, informal learning and local culture, often responding to the latent culture within a local area. Our public spaces are part gallery, part night school, part micro retail and we look to use collaborations and direct commissions to create a dynamic mix of experiences for members and the local community. At High Street House (post- COVID-19) we are working with a catwalk fashion label to make available catwalk clothes to rent in-house at low cost. This extends the concept of sharing, while offering members the opportunity to experience clothes which would be less accessible if a member had to purchase.

Gallery spaces will host local photographers who will work with members to document their experience of the building and area. This creates a record of the building in use and facilitates dialogue with local people. For Noiascape, shared spaces need to actively connect to local areas – providing a space that can host latent local talent in music, art and fashion.

We will extend the purpose of the shared spaces in 2021 to create a social timebank. Members will offer their time each month to contribute to groups in their local community. Noiascape will then offer this time to local groups at no cost. Members will have to commit to this as part of their membership. This approach will act as a catalyst to create interaction between members and the local community.

COVID-19 has revealed that social interaction is critical to urban life. Everyday interaction connects us to a place and sustains community. These rituals never register until they are removed and they play out through spatial and social structures - simple rituals, such as a wave, a glance, a hello. There is a view that without a handshake you cannot start a city. Subtle spatial moves and everyday rituals increase the intensity of opportunity for interaction. Operational culture can also encourage interaction. The Noiascape project observes everyday rituals to understand how we can amplify the opportunity for social interaction. We design circulation systems that maximise visual connection into shared spaces, creating interfaces that allow you to see others as you leave and enter the building. This connection creates opportunities for conversations, and from these incidental moments members can meet and continue the dialogue at events we curate.

At High Street House a micro library is built into the central staircase. The aim is to encourage a culture of sharing books and to start conversations about those books. These embedded rituals build a culture of informal learning and exchange. They are not identified on an excel sheet, but their impact amounts to higher rates of retention and a stronger feeling of being part of something that has purpose. This approach must take place at the interface between design and operation.

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Strategies for delivering sustainability

The English Housing Survey shows that 35% of private rented space was built before 1919. Since 2018, rental homes need to have a minimum EPC rating of E. In 2017, 303,000 rental homes had an EPC rating of F. A thought-through and joined up approach to sustainability needs to be integral to all development and operational structures. Noiascape’s High Street House project is powered 100% from electric renewable energy, and this energy powers the electric underfloor heating and hot water systems. This is our response to the government’s 2019 UK Housing: Fit for The Future report that proposes to ban fossil fuel from heating systems in new homes from 2025 onwards. Operators will need to be part of the design development stage to inform the specification of systems that can manage energy use and reduce operational cost.

Coliving buildings can demonstrate longer term strategies for delivering sustainability. This is informed by the operators’ long term involvement. Beyond the development stage, operators can innovate at many levels throughout the life of the building. By providing co-working space in our buildings, we will reduce the need for members to commute. This creates less demand on public transport systems and returns more time to members; it also intensifies economic activity in local areas. Combined with densification, this economic activity could re-energise local high streets throughout the day, supporting a new range of services and cultural uses which could support local social and economic growth, and foster a more joined-up approach that creates relationships between places, people and systems.

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Let’s see how things develop

People who choose to live in a coliving building are making a conscious choice to live in a place that is actively creating opportunities for social interaction beyond their family, partner or work friends. Outside of student organisations there are limited choices for urban living that can provide social connection. Housing models have been overtly private and established rental options do not offer social interaction as part of your living experience. People actively make coliving choices as they are excited by the possibility of encounter, of meeting different people and being exposed to new social and cultural experiences. Curating this encounter is a new landscape for coliving operators.

Noiascape designs and develops buildings from the lens of the operator. This requires a constant evolution of ideas, to expand the typology and engage members through the operational life of a building. Like an Apple product, this approach will require innovation in the hardware (buildings) and software (operations). If this approach is adopted, it will evolve not only the coliving sector, but the future of cities.