A NEW CO-LIVING PROJECT ON MOUNTJOY STREET
For many years there was a derelict building between Paradise Place and Mountjoy Street and beside it is the famous Black Church.
It is now being redeveloped as the “Black Church View” project, which will consist of 114 shared accommodation units, a café, gym, co-working space and indoor and outdoor recreation and amenity spaces.
Below is a somewhat idealised description of co-living.
Each floor is seen as a single community and private resident rooms feed into shared residential communal facilities. According to the developer apartment sizes will be well in excess of the minimum floor area required under current planning regulations.
Co-living is a residential community living model that accommodates three or more biologically unrelated people living in the same dwelling unit. Generally co-living is a type of intentional community that provides shared housing for people with similar values or intentions. The co-living experience may simply include group discussions in common areas or weekly meals, although will oftentimes extend to shared workspace and collective endeavours such as living more sustainably. An increasing number of people across the world are turning to co-living in order to unlock the same benefits as other communal living models (such as communes or co-housing), including “comfort, affordability, and a greater sense of social belonging.”
Co-living as a modern concept traces its origins to shared living models of the 19th and 20th centuries such as tenements in the UK, boarding houses in the US, and chawls in western India, yet ancient forms of communal living such as the longhouse date back thousands of years. Its contemporary form has gained prominence in recent years due to a combination of factors including increased urbanisation rates, a lack of affordable housing options, greater rates of disability requiring group home or assisted living arrangements, and a growing interest in lifestyles not dependent upon long-term contracts.
