Orchard Yard Cohousing Group · 2026
Orchard Yard: cohousing for 14 households
Fourteen timber homes and a shared common house on a former plant nursery, designed with the residents over 22 workshops and certified to Passivhaus.
The problem
The Orchard Yard group had 14 households, a 0.42-hectare former plant nursery on the edge of town and a clear idea: private homes, shared everything else. They wanted a common house with a kitchen big enough to cook for 40, a laundry, guest rooms, a workshop and as little car space as the council would allow. The construction budget was $5.8 million.
The households ranged from a retired couple to a family of five, and each needed a different home. The site has a public footpath along its northern edge, a row of old apple trees worth keeping, and a highways requirement for fire tender access to every front door. Most of the group had never read a drawing.
Process
- 01
Twenty-two workshops
We ran workshops every three weeks for a year, using a 1:200 site model with movable wooden blocks. The group settled on two terraces facing each other across a car-free lane, with the common house at the end by the footpath. Parking went to the site entrance, so every walk home passes the shared kitchen.
- 02
Four house types, one panel system
Fourteen bespoke homes would have broken the budget. We designed four types, from a one-bed flat to a four-bed house, all built from the same CLT panel set and window sizes. Residents chose layouts and finishes within each type. Brick ground floors face the lane, larch boarding above.
- 03
Certified, then measured
Every home was modelled in PHPP and certified to Passivhaus, with a shared ground-source heat loop and solar panels on the south roofs. The CLT went up in eleven weeks, and the common house was finished first so the group could hold site meetings in it.
Selected images
Outcome
The households moved in during spring 2026. Monitored heating demand across the 14 homes averages 14 kWh/m² a year, and the shared solar array covers about 40 percent of annual electricity. The common house serves meals three evenings a week. The scheme kept all nine apple trees, and the first harvest was pressed into juice at the opening party. Two households have since swapped homes as their families changed, which the shared panel system made simple.
- 1,720m²
- Total floor area
- 14
- kWh/m² a year heating
- $3,350
- Construction cost per m²
Most of us had never read a plan. By the end we were arguing about window sills at 1:20. They made us able to design our own street.
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