Speculative design project — coliving for women by women
How can we reimagine a living space that is designed for women?
DOMUS is a coliving space designed for women by women, combining the safety of a private refugium with the excitement of integration into a vibrant community. It is a place for women to connect with others and an inspiring sanctuary.
DOMUS initially started as a 5-week design sprint when 3 friends came together to explore creating better living solutions for women.
We each come from creative fields of product design, brand marketing, and web design. Coming from the technology world, we are trained by profession to play in the digital world. Yet somehow, we constantly notice our physical environment and how small changes in our environment change our mood and our every day. Even though our professional line of work did not lend us to designing interiors, it is a project that’s close to our hearts.
We hope that through this project, we embrace our passion for designing our living environment, raise awareness and share our learnings in how much the environment affects us, and empower other women to live better.
Further details
As art directors, strategists, designers, and women, the idea of a coliving community appeal greatly to us, but we want our own private space. We like sharing resources, having dinner together, yet we also desire a clean and well-designed place that feels secure, light-filled, convenient, and environmentally conscious. We believe that how we live directly affects our well-being and productivity. We constantly search for that ideal home, yet we couldn’t find one that we love. Thus, we founded DOMUS. The desire for community, the changing needs of women, and the unique state of the world led us to design this special space.
Community and Privacy
There is the rise of living alone. One-person households are becoming increasingly common around the world. Despite the trend, the desire for social connections persists.
We realized looking into research why coliving often did not work out in historic examples, was that the community was rather closed. We thus understand the importance of designing in context.
We propose a co-living concept with a small dedicated personal space, integrated within a large shared living room, along with a creative coworking area accessible to the people from the community.
Sharing means maintaining our independence, our privacy, yet being intertwined with a community when we choose to. DOMUS connects the ideals of privacy, family-like community, and the vibrance of a city.
As Women
We have a unique set of needs as women. To us, we need a space that is private, safe, and inspiring. We sometimes need that quiet sanctuary to think, reflect, a place where we can call our own, our secret garden.
In order to understand women’s needs from a global perspective, we started hosting weekly talks on Clubhouse, where we invite old and new friends to share their stories on their lifestyle, ideal home, and way of living.
Whilst it is too early to draw final conclusions from our research, we discovered a pattern of women rearranging their homes very frequently, find natural light and a bathtub beneficial for their happiness and health, use the kitchen as a space to come together, and enjoy socializing in a dedicated living space area.
A New World
Since the pandemic, many of us have found ourselves in rather restrained and uninspiring spaces. The bedroom also became our office and gym. We desire a separation of space to do concentrated work and a place to unwind.
An inspiring environment means being surrounded by creative minds. Instead of resorting to virtual hangouts, we seek face-to-face interactions and live with friends.
Design Concept V1
We thought of design solutions that are similar and easily replicable to the original case study house ideology of the 1950s. We looked into how women use and live in a contemporary shared space and home: entertaining, exercising, watching movies, cooking, and eating together.
The word domus means a type of dwelling found in ancient Rome. We were inspired by the design of the dwelling, which included an atrium surrounded by cubicula (bedrooms) along with a dining room triclinium. One transitions elegantly from one space to another.
In our concept, a path divides the floor plan into four areas: public lobby, atrium with coworking space, shared residential areas, and private living space. The passages transition from the exterior patio to the interior hallway seamlessly, blurring the boundaries of the house.
Central to the design is the atrium. It is a green space surrounded by bungalow-like cubes. With the ideals of biophilic design, the roof is punctured with openings for trees to grow through.
Each of the private bedroom cubes features an expansive floor-to-ceiling window, allowing plenty of light to come into the small living space. The bedroom modules sometimes face the inner courtyard, where residents can peek at the vibrant community and be signaled to join in.
Future — Moving from vision to reality.
Women’s voices in the interior and architecture industry are growing and we are excited to be part of the conversation. We would love to bring DOMUS from concept to reality, pushing the boundaries with creativity and care. Let’s take things to the next level. We are currently working on a deck to publish the research findings on our website.
About us
Alexandra Plesner
Alexandra helped reframe the brand positioning of leading design studios, startups, and heritage brands. As a creative strategist, she was responsible to translate and create brand vision for product offering, physical and digital space. Alexandra built communities for a global cultural publication and was the founder of a non-profit art collective. She enjoys working on a handful of projects at any given time, from case study houses to speculative design projects.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn and have a chat!
Coco Liu
Coco crafted web experiences for a leading tech company, built brand partnerships for a global lifestyle messaging app, and helped the team build the brand and product of a home-sharing platform to connect with the cryptocurrency community. Coco is passionate about how the physical world affects the way we connect. She is the founder of Socialhaus, a project where she looked into transforming the social landscape in the modern era by curating urban living rooms for cities around the world.
Lena Chun
Working with startups, leading e-commerce companies, Lena is an experienced motion and UX designer and can tackle all aspects of the design process. She has worked to design an online platform that offers availability for everyone all the time. In her spare time, she designed and built modular furniture systems. Lena is also a passionate relationship and career coach, running a YouTube channel to reach a wider community.
