The colony concept
Arrange 5 Cozy Home Colonies together to form a community with 40 residences and 5 Common Houses.
A Cozy Home Community consists of multiple Colonies.
A Colony is 8 separate, independent two bedroom, two bath homes clustered on an acre of land. In the center is the Common House, with a few small bedrooms and bathrooms, and open space the residents can decide how best to use — with options like tables for community meals, sofas and seating areas for hang-out time.
Each home shares a two-car carport with their neighbor. Don’t panic. Remember, with Uber, Lyft and self-driving cars, the future of transportation will likely reduce the need for everyone to own their own car.
Plus, the community nature of living in a Cozy Home Colony lends itself to sharing resources, not duplicating them.
A single Cozy Home Colony can fit on an acre and the houses can be configured in a wide variety of ways. Since the homes are designed to be passive solar, and have solar panels, southern exposure is preferred.
Three to five such colonies comprise the standard Cozy Home Community.™
Why a playground? Got grandkids who might visit? Other options include a water feature, a place for exercise equipment, or even a zen garden.
know your neighbors
“The idea is to create colonies of people who do or might have an affinity for each other at this stage of life:
Former friends from childhood or college
Retired school teachers
Fans of sports teams
Outdoor enthusiasts
Musicians and artists
Single with no kids
...and more”
The old adage is that “you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your neighbors.”
But what if you could? What if you could decide to live with people you know in a community together?
Today it’s hard to do. Few single-family neighborhoods have several houses available where friends could move in together at the same time. It’s even hard to do with new construction.
Apartments and condos have the same issue, plus your pals would only be a small part of a larger multi-family property.
Cozy Home Community offers a new approach to living independently — and separately — but together in community.
Note to the lawyers out there: We are fully compliant with all equal housing opportunity rules and regulations. Everyone is welcome in any home in any colony.
The connections can be new or lifelong and deep.
Don’t have others yet you know you want to live with? We match residents with colonies using tools similar to how colleges pair dorm roommates, using Match.com-like algorithms and other resources. These tools also help recruit new residents when someone moves out of a colony.
what’s with the bright colors?
Good question. It’s intentional.
Cozy Homes take advantage of the latest in the science of how humans respond and react to the built environment. New research links how we feel every day to where we live, what we see out the window, and other spatial elements we encounter in our lives.
Bright, cheerful colors, sunlight, and lush green environments trigger positive, emotional responses in our brains that can be measured using fMRI machines but are hard for people to explain. Colin Ellard, a cognitive neuroscientist, and director of the Urban Realities Laboratory at the University of Waterloo in Canada, has published countless peer-reviewed studies of how people respond to their environment. Read Places of the Heart: The Pyschogeography of Everyday Life to learn more about this emerging field.
We are also inspired by Ingrid Fetell Lee, an industrial designer and author of Joyful and curator of the website The Aesthetics of Joy. Ingrid’s inspiring TED Talk on Where Joy Hides and How to Find It will explain in short order the design and color palette.