As housing markets all over the world are plagued by shrinking stock and rising prices, shared residence concepts are becoming more interesting for people. Communal Living, our second FRAME Views series, looks at spatial design projects leading in this area. The first to be featured is Tankhouse, a Brooklyn residential building that challenges typical high-density living.

Tankhouse was born from the mission to ‘free urban multi-unit dwelling from traditional protocols’, an idea that emerged during the Great Recession. NYC architecture firm So-Il developed the 5,016-sq-m, 18-residence complex with the guiding principle that access to open green space makes living in close proximity to others more sustainable. Encompassing three courtyards, Tankhouse’s concrete architecture is meant to foster informal interactions between fellow inhabitants and the wider public, offering contrasting scenarios for privacy and intimacy. ‘It’s very important that there are those people that are trying to challenge housing models – meaning the financial models,’ says Florian Idenburg, cofounder of So-Il. ‘I think you can make better design more compact design, and in that sense create higher density not as a compromise but as a quality.’

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