About
The two cofounders of CoHousing Berlin, Michael LaFond and Winfried Haertel, are convinced that CoHousing offers significant, innovative concepts for societal coexistence within today's urban environment and hence also for tomorrow's cities.
CoHousing = Collaborative Living
community-oriented. self-organized. sustainable. cosmopolitan.
community-oriented.
Individual apartments in one or more buildings which include community rooms, a common garden, shared meals...how much community is organized is decided on together. So an optimum balance is achieved between interests in sharing and personal needs for privacy.self-organized.
Living in a neighborhood of your own choice, with conditions you have worked out together, and in a cooperatively designed environment. So not only your own apartment is your home, but an entire building or neighborhood.sustainable.
Residents make good, long-term decisions as they carry responsibility for their own buildings and land. Through sharing they save resources, and realize that many ecological concepts are really only effective at the neighborhood level.cosmopolitan.
We have chosen the international term CoHousing as we understand ourselves to be part of a much larger, border-crossing movement. More and more people including young and old, families and singles, are learning from each other and gaining experience with participatory and cooperative housing: Berlin finds itself in the center of this exciting and rapidly developing international network!
What does CoHousing Berlin offer?
In addition to connecting interested people with developing CoHousing communities, we are also introducing the principles underlying CoHousing in all their myriad facets and familiarizing the general public with these concepts by profiling numerous concrete examples. This primarily takes place on three levels:
- Berlin: Networking on a community level, creating a marketplace for projects to introduce themselves, fostering ways for the community to share information and experiences, creating means for projects, engineers and experts to find each other
- Other cities: Passing along know-how, advising local governmental bodies and other proponents with an active interest in creating their own CoHousing projects
- Internationally: Developing a network of ideas, trends and CoHousing experts and activists - positioning Berlin in the world and bringing the world to Berlin
Especially in those places where CoHousing cannot be easily created by citizens, cities and local governmental bodies can provide needed impetus while introducing and supporting CoHousing as a viable model. At its core, this approach aims to bring together interested people, significant ideas and concepts as well as relevant projects and initiatives.
The two founders of the CoHousing Berlin platform also provide advice to interested people, city administrations and institutions in the framework of seminars, workshops, research and individual consulting. [Request a quote]