Glass-House Chats: Designing for Encounters

Co-hosted with Tijmen Kuyper

Amidst growing bottom-up and top-down interest in housing that facilitates community, it is important to keep in mind that it is not simply shared space, but an engaged community that is the source of community benefits such as informal care, mental health and sustainability. While much attention goes to the planned community events, the spontaneous encounter is often taken for granted. These unplanned social interactions are, however, the oxygen of any community. Spatial design plays a crucial role in facilitating or hindering these.

Our co-host for this Chat is Dutch co-housing expert and architect Tijmen Kuyper, who has done some inspiring research on the importance of creating a design for encounters and has built it into guidance for those embarking on co-housing and other community-focused projects. Together, we’ll explore the challenge of getting the balance of privacy, efficiency, and encounter right, and some of the preconceptions and misconceptions about the pros and cons of Designing for Encounters.

About Glass-House Chats

Glass-House Chats are monthly hour-long online spaces for conversation and connection, to ask questions and explore ideas, approaches and methods, share learning and meet others.

Series 6 sees us collaborating with a range of inspiring people and organisations who will co-host sessions with us. Each guest co-host will help us bring focus, expertise and experience to conversations about different aspects of the design of places. From empathy to sustainability, we’ll unpick some of the successful ingredients of design and explore what great design can achieve.

About our Co-host

Tijmen Kuyper is a Dutch cohousing expert. With his background in both Human Geography and Architecture, he always combines the academic with the practical. People with places. Sunny idealism with cold pragmatism. He recently wrote a book on how architecture can facilitate community engagement.

How to Take Part

Glass-House Chats are open to anyone with an interest in the event topic. No specific experience or expertise is required to join the conversation. We believe that our Chats only benefit from a wide mix of voices, interests and experiences.

These free online events are kept intentionally small so that everyone taking part can jump in and join the conversation. Where possible, we encourage participants to keep their cameras and microphones on, to pose questions and ideas, and to share stories and links.

To create a safe space for open discussion, the Chatham House Rule is applied. Key discussion points are collated, anonymised and shared after each session.

How to Book

Glass-House Chats are free events, but places are limited, so please register only if you plan to attend.

Please note:

We will record the Chat session to help with capturing the conversation, but this recording will not be made publicly available or shared outside The Glass-House team. Following the event, we will publish a blog capturing key discussion points, but rest assured that no-one will be quoted directly, and no participants will be named. Please feel free to email us at info@theglasshouse.org.uk if you have any queries.