Architecture by Rafi Segal A+U with collaborating artist Marisa Morán Jahn, 2020
Carehaus, designed by Rafi Segal in collaboration with Marisa Morán Jahn, is the first intergenerational, care-based co-housing project in the U.S. Its first prototype in Baltimore is expected to be completed in 2024.
Design solidarity is becoming increasingly important in architecture and design circles. The concept refers to how mutualistic organizations and the sharing economy are addressing inequality by restructuring housing, care, labor, and more. In their new book, Design and Solidarity: Conversations on Collective Futures (Columbia University Press, 2023), architect Rafi Segal and artist Marisa Morán Jahn discuss with leading thinkers and design practitioners the transformative potential of mutualism and design.
Design, art, and architecture play a crucial role in forming these restructuring initiatives, delivering on their promise of solidarity and ensuring that these values endure. Buildings and urban forms like community centers, farmers markets, and parks can be shaped to promote mutualism, self-determination, and democracy. Just think of New York’s Union Square Park, which has functioned as a public gathering place for social movements since the 19th century.
The authors also explore innovative, thought-provoking examples of design solidarity from both the past and present. There is the maloca—a form of collective housing found among Indigenous peoples in the Amazon, where 30 to 50 people live together in an ancestral longhouse, resulting in profound connections with each other. Another, newer model is the affordable village housing for rural land in Rwanda’s Mageragere region on the outskirts of Kigali. Led by Segal in collaboration with students from MIT and the University of Rwanda, the group behind the project worked with masons, local brick manufacturers, and villagers to design and build a low-cost prototype house for families displaced by natural disasters.
Segal and Jahn’s Carehaus project is one of the most promising showcased in the book. It is the U.S.’s first intergenerational, care-based co-housing project and employs a principle of development without displacement in a historically divested neighborhood. In Carehauses, older adults or those with disabilities, caregivers, and their families live in independent units clustered around communal spaces where meals, pastimes, and shared care take place. The children and families of caregivers can socialize with elders, which in turn reduces the cost of childcare. This means that communal amenities like a fully equipped kitchen, cleaning appliances, medical aid accessories, storage space, and air conditioning allow the group to benefit from shared expenses and even reduce energy consumption. Moreover, caregivers receive stable jobs with good wages and benefits, and those needing care receive better quality service than they would normally be able to afford. Segal and Jahn are beginning the permitting process for the first Carehaus prototype in Baltimore; they hope to start building this summer, with completion slated for sometime next year.
Design solidarity means that when architects, designers, and communities work together, they can develop structures and protocols to produce collective spaces that are more responsive to the needs and values of different communities. It’s an exciting new frontier with many possibilities.
This article first appeared in the April 2023 issue of ARCHITECT.
