This site provides information about the Fairview House's renovation activities and the kitchen/common area remodeling project in progress. The site provides an information source/exchange for the Fairview residents, provides information and project updates for other stakeholders in the project, and serves as a demonstration project in online architectural communication/collaboration for the architectural practice class at the San Francisco Institute of Architecture. More information about other projects from this class can be found here.

 

About Fairview and the kitchen project

Project goals and process

Fairview Home page

Funding

About the designer

 

 

About Fairview and the current project:

Fairview House is a cooperative committed to providing affordable home ownership opportunities in a collective, ecologically aware living situation. We are located in Berkeley ,CA near the Ashby bart station. For more on the area. Fairview owns two adjacent houses as a nonprofit resident owned limited-equity housing cooperative. As residents, we each own an equal share in the collective and are responsible for managing the property together through consensus decision-making. For more about us see the Fairview home page.

About the current project:

One of our long-term goals is to create and and live in a low lifecycle cost, sustainable(as possible), urban community. We've approached that through several angles: forming a cooperative corporation to pool economic and physical resources(we have 2 refrigerators instead of 10, etc.); attempting to live together as best we can in a conscious, respectful, and open fashion; and to create a physical environment to help make that possible.

Project goals

Over the past several years we have been slowly renovating our site and buildings more or less towards that goal. We've replaced and upgraded most of the critical structural elements in our two buildings and are moving into the more fun, inovative projects. The shared kitchen is one of the last really large projects. Our goal is to renovate the kitchen to meet the needs of the large cooperative household it feeds, and, create systems in it and on the site that are as ecologically sound as possible. For more see the Design criteria.

About the process:

We decided to attempt design of the kitchen as a facilitated cooperative process for several reasons. Finding an architect with experience in communal design is somewhat difficult. Architectural fees can be expensive-- especially on a limited budget. The member of our group, Ian, who is facilitating the design process is currently in architectural school. Much of the process of putting the project online arises out of requirements for one of his classes. Several members of our group have experience with various areas of the process, and, others willing to learn.

The goal is to have the designer be a facilitator who draws input from the many, sometimes divergent, desires/needs of the group, synthesizes that input into some communicable form and represents it to the group. In addition they will help coordinate other tasks, input and research needed from members. The hope is to involve as many members with a large as possible stake in the process, rather than relying on outside architect to hand over some completed fait accompli.

Funding

This and other projects at Fairview have been funded through the generosity of many volunteers and members, Fairview's own reserves, loan assistance from the City of Berkeley Housing dept, private loan financing, and the asssistance of the Northern California Land Trust. Fairview's 501(c)3 status is pending.

For more details see Financing and Budgets

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