Last night TOWN Director, Jonny Anstead, joined Dave Prinsep from Cambridge City Council and Meredith Bowles from Mole Architects to talk to the Cambridge Forum for the Construction Industry (CFCI) about K1 Cambridge Cohousing.

The CFCI is a membership organisation comprising developers, designers and other industry professionals. It comes together on a monthly basis to learn about and discuss new developments in and around Cambridge, and to consider other challenges and opportunities in the sector.

Dave Prinsep opened the Forum with a potted history of K1 Cambridge Cohousing. Starting with the council’s decision during the recent recession to use the K1 site to model an alternative form of housing, and leading up to the appointment of TOWNHus – a collaboration between TOWN and Swedish timber housing company Trivselhus – as preferred developer in 2015.

Jonny then introduced TOWN, giving an overview of cohousing and explaining how TOWN had worked with Cambridge Cohousing members to bring forward plans for the scheme. He also outlined TOWN’s unique approach to custom build and configurable housing.

Finally, Meredith Bowles presented the design and architectural aspects of the K1 scheme, including the composition of streets, the shared garden and the Common House.

CFCI members were intrigued by the scheme and put a wide range of questions to the panel. In particular, we discussed the process of working with future residents during the design stage, and talked about measures that might be taken to deliver more cohousing and custom build schemes in the future.

We had a great evening with the CFCI and hope to be back soon to talk about the experience of building K1.