ABSTRACT
People of all ages and backgrounds – not just young people, but couples, families and pensioners too – are exploring the benefits of shared living. This is fuelling the emergence of radical new building typologies, designed around a concept of communal spaces and resources. The degree of sharing differs for each, but they all have one thing in common: they are designed around the concepts of fluidity and flexibility, using economies of scale to offer higher-quality facilities and services than would otherwise be available. Technology has also facilitated the rise of the so-called ‘sharing economy’, allowing the concept of subscription-based sharing to infiltrate our everyday lives. Brands like Uber, Airbnb and Zipcar have created a model for how the sharing of both goods and services can be managed via the smartphone apps, and made it enticing to a global audience.
