Sharing Is Saving? Building Costs Simulation of Collaborative and Mainstream Housing Designs

Building costs play a significant role in determining the affordability of a housing project, and these depend to a large extent on design choices. This paper is based on the premise that collaborative design processes, or co-design, used in collaborative housing (CH) in Europe reduce building costs and consequently increase the affordability of...

Affordability through design: the role of building costs in collaborative housing

Against the background of the current housing affordability crisis, a new wave of ‘collaborative housing’ (CH) is developing in many European cities. In this paper, CH refers to housing projects where residents choose to share certain spaces and are involved in the design phase. While many authors point to the alleged economic benefits of...