the “familistere” in guise in france, built by charles fourier’s follower andre godin in 1859, is a realisation of fourier’s utopian phalanstery. the idea of the familistere is to have  families (of factory-workers) housed in a palace-like blocks with a glass covered courtyard in the middle  as a shared common space for children to play and adults to gather. food shops, laundry room, a nursery, a cafe, a bookshop, even an indoor pool, are housed in other blocks around these familisteres.

a conceptual diagram to show how spaces are shared would look like this (below right):

if we look at the chinese courtyard housing on sinan lu, the boundaries between individual family apartment, shared corridor, common courtyard; between indoor and outdoor; or between laundry area, car park, children’s play area, adult’s gathering space, and garden are more ambiguous. things spill over; they overlap.

a possible diagram could look like this:

the idea of how spaces are shared in housing, whether between families or within the family unit, is a topic which we are now studying at our office.