Yulupa Cohousing Community

Author: Kayla Ho | Major: Architecture | Semester: Spring 2022

My name is Kayla Ho and my capstone is about the lived social experience of a cohousing community. I’m doing a case study of Yulupa Cohousing in Santa Rosa, California using interviewing and photography as research methods and narrative tools. I’m majoring in architecture with a minor in sustainability.

I’m completing my capstone in the spring of 2022, and I traveled to Yulupa Cohousing for a few days during my spring break as part of the capstone. I visited the cohousing community to gather information in the form of original photographs. While I was there, I was able to walk around the entire community and see the shared spaces of the community. I saw interior spaces like the workshop and common house with a kitchen, laundry room, play room, and library. I also saw exterior spaces such as gardens, playground, courtyard, passageways, balconies, and porches.

There were quite a few shared spaces and each one offered a different representation of shared living. The gardens were divided into plots owned by different residents. The library had shelves of books and movies for residents to share. The common house had several tables for large groups of people to sit and eat together. The exterior spaces were especially sunny and lovely with many trees and potted plants!

A few residents showed me their units and allowed me to photograph them inside their units. This allowed me to create photographs of people in their private lives, opposite the photographs of people in their shared spaces. The cohousing community has a variety of unit types from studios all the way to four bedrooms, and I was able to see a variety of unit types in different locations of the community! Seeing these units in their different locations gave me a sense of the different relationships the residents had with their neighbors, the shared spaces, and the world outside their community.

Prior to visiting the community I had conducted interview virtually with several of the community’s residents, and during my visit I was able to meet with and photograph the interviewees! While walking around, I also met other residents and asked to take their portraits too! In addition to taking portraits, I also photographed the buildings, spaces, objects, events, and people – basically I photographed everything I saw!

I spent a significant amount of time walking around the property and in each space. I visited each space at least twice during different times of day (to capture different qualities of light in the photographs). For the portraits, I planned out my photographs prior to traveling since I had a much smaller amount of time to take those photographs in an effort to be respectful of their time. When photographing, I searched for elements that were representative of the kind of social life of the community; visually compelling compositions, colors, and forms; portraits that spoke something about the subject’s feelings.

Traveling to Yulupa Cohousing allowed me to gain valuable insights about the social life of the community and capture my own photographs. After visiting Yulupa Cohousing and gathering my research, I will incorporate the photographs into the book I am crafting to tell a story about the social experience of Yulupa. In addition to being able to gather information, traveling to Yulupa Cohousing gave me the opportunity to meet the residents and strengthen my relationship with the community and I will of course continue my communication with the community while I complete my capstone.