The project addresses how spatial and material decisions can help create the conditions for intimacy in an increasingly isolated society. The proposal is a prototypical cooperative housing typology composed of a primary in situ timber frame and prefabricated hempcrete cassettes. Inward facing openings are privileged over outward facing ones, with large pivoting windows creating moments of connection across a courtyard, allowing for relationships to be established at a distance. The life and activity of residents takes centre stage, enabling a large degree of flexibility about where the building is sited, as it removes the dependence on the context to provide views and a relationship to place.

The ground floor of the building provides flexible social, communal and commercial space. In this instance it is shown occupied by a bathhouse, which draws from the Japanese Onsen where bathing is a social affair and is the focal point of a community. Responding to a UK cultural context, the visual and acoustic qualities of the spaces has been carefully sequenced to allow the residents to slowly become comfortable with nudity and various levels of exposure. These communal spaces provide moments of encounter and interaction, places where relationships are formed and that foster a sense of community.