Abstract
Participating in social life and sharing spaces, activities, or resources within a community are ancient constituents of the living traditions all around the world. This chapter describes, with an in-depth analysis, 12 historical typologies of shared living, distributed on the five continents. The cases highlight (1) the influence of the ethnographic characteristics in the physical and social structure of the communities and (2) the importance of the communitarian dimensions for the survival of the groups.
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- 1.
In 1919, Walter Grophius defined architecture as the clear expression of the noblest thoughts of men, of their fervor, of their humanity, of their faith, and of their religion.
- 2.
In the case of the construction of the Tiburtino area, a neighborhood in Rome, through a project by Quaroni and Ridolfi, architecture also becomes a representation of society. The residential districts built by INA-Casa over the years after World War II are perhaps the only design outcome of the so-called “realistic architecture”: informal and composed of a typological mix, more suitable for the rural villages that the people who would have been given new homes came from.
- 3.
We must hold tight to the Greek concept of citizenship. In particular, we refer to the social thought of Aristotle that, as Maurice Le Bel highlights, excluded slaves (actually the greatest number of people living in the cities) [3].
- 4.
We will see that the sharing of meals is an extremely important element in forming a sense of community, including in contemporary co-housing.
- 5.
Considered the main planner of the fifth century, the plants at Miletus, Thurii, Rhodes and Piraeus are attributed to him. He is considered famous not just for the orthogonal systems of his projects (which were already present in the Greek urbanism) but for a new reduced dimension of the blocks and streets, all with the same size.
- 6.
Protagoras (490–c. 420 BC) is one of the best-known sophists.
- 7.
François-Marie-Charles Fourier (1772–1837).
- 8.
In English, “defense of civil rights.”
- 9.
In English, “harmony.”
- 10.
This is a very strong social vision that will be picked up by some communities in the Israeli kibbutz, or in some cases by intentional communities of co-housing and eco-villages.
- 11.
It is interesting to note that many of the utopian visions, from the Sforzinda by Francesco di Giorgio to the City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella, prefer to confront “tabula rasa” contexts, like islands in the sea or places immersed in more or less vague plains—utopian visions that, to better express their concept of society, flee the existing reality, thereby evading that fundamental step that would indicate the processes of transformation of the society.
- 12.
“Wind and water”: a tradition that allowed man to find the right equilibrium with nature and with environmental forces.
- 13.
This is even more significant if we consider what the document produced by UNESCO reports: “The Tulous, although providing communal housing and reinforcing the structure of clans, were, until the twentieth century, mostly built and owned by one powerful individual” [10].
- 14.
Sculpted words to celebrate the establishment of the kibbutz “Degania,” in the north of Israel.
- 15.
Eighty percent of the population lives in the north and south of Israel [11].
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Giorgi, E. (2020). Sharing as Cultural Preexistence. In: The Co-Housing Phenomenon. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37097-8_3
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