Quickies: A Step Towards The Arcology?

     Have a close look at this living-and-working concept being attempted in Syracuse, NY:

     SYRACUSE—This office looks like a pretty typical co-working space, what with the guy with a ponytail coding in one corner, the pile of bikes clustered in another, and the minimalist desks spread across a light-filled room. Troy Evans opened this space, CoWorks, in a downtown building here in February.

     Coworking is probably a familiar concept at this point, but Evans wants to take his idea a step further. On Friday, on the top two floors of the building, he’s starting construction on a space he envisions as a dorm for Millennials, though he cringes at the word “dorm.” Commonspace, as he’s calling it, will feature 21 microunits, which each pack a tiny kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living space into 300-square-feet. The microunits surround shared common areas including a chef’s kitchen, a game room, and a TV room. Worried about the complicated social dynamics of so many Millennials in one living unit? Fear not, Evans and partner John Talarico are hiring a “social engineer” who will facilitate group events and maintain harmony among roommates.

     Forget communes or co-ops. Millennials, Evans says, want the chance to be alone in their own bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens, but they also want to be social and never lonely (hence #FOMO).

     I’ve just come back from the Commonspace Website, and given current socioeconomic conditions, I think the designer is doing the right thing at the right time. His prospective market is large and probably quite eager for something like this.

     However, the thought that immediately came to mind upon reading about Evans’s idea was the Todos Santos city-in-a-building Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle put at the center of their novel Oath of Fealty. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it, less for its entertainment value than for the glimpse it affords at a possible line of quasi-urban development.

     The originator of this concept of habitat is Paolo Soleri, a visionary architect. Though his original ideas were oriented toward harmony with an existing terrestrial ecology, enthusiasts have extended them to include economic and ecological self-sufficiency. His conceptions have been taken up with much excitement by space enthusiasts, especially those dreaming of permanent space habitats or generation ships for interstellar voyages.

     Troy Evans’s Commonspace squints toward the Todos Santos-sort of implementation of Soleri’s ideas. Indeed, though it could hardly be called self-sufficient, all the elements are present for an export-oriented micro-economy that would only need access to transportation and communication to be wholly viable...and situating it in a substantial city guarantees those facilities.

     I’ll be watching this development. Stay tuned.

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