Development: Realizing Aspirations—Managing Expectations.

Bruce Coldham

Cohousing is challenged with balancing the aspirations of custom-designed housing with the standardization (driven by the desire to realize cost affordability) of production building. This presentation explains how the offering of a small set of “basic unit types” with a modest “standard package of options” and the opportunity (disencouraged and priced accordingly) for customization at the discretion of the architect has produced a delightful, award-winning residential setting beloved by its inhabitants. The Rocky Hill cohousing community in Florence MA is the third in an evolving suite of cohousing projects by Coldham and Hartman that have dealt with this challenge.

Bruce Coldham has run his own architectural practice in Amherst, Massachusetts since 1989, which is dedicated to producing high performing, green buildings for clients that care about producing enduring architecture. He has been active in the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association over the same period, receiving in March of 2000 a "Lifetime Achievement Award" from its Quality Building Council. He joined its Board in April 2003 and has Board Chair for the past 3 years. Since 1989 he has lead the effort to establish cohousing as a viable housing option in the US northeast including founding the Northeast Cohousing Quarterly, now part of the national Cohousing Journal.