Honouring our commitment to open data and sharing, we have decided to offer the results from our scouting exercise to non-profit cohousing groups who are looking for a site.
The Fiche Factory: how it worked
Because it was such a big undertaking, we eventually called our scouting exercise the “Fiche Factory”. This is because for every site that was scouted (about 180 in total) we made a short “fiche”, which was then screened by the people from Team Building. If the screening came back positive, we went to look for the owners and to see whether a site was for sale. If all this came back positive, then usually we sent the fiche to the architects for a first assessment (“pre-feasibility study”). Depending on the outcome of the pre-feasibility study (architects plus the full group’s consent) we then went for a real feasibility study.
Picture: a copy of our mother map
Picture: a screenshot of the Excel Master file
The feasibility studies
The first two that we ordered came back negative (“not feasible”), so there is nothing tangible to be shared. After that we had three studies that came back positive: JET-14, MOL-26 and AND-28 (studies are named after the code of the respective fiche). JET-14 is the site that we made an offer on, but the MOL-26 and AND-28 studies should still be good.
What we can offer
If you send us an email (cohousing[at]thereef[dot]brussels), we are happy to send you:
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A copy of the MOL-26 and AND-28 feasibility study
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A copy of the sketches of two more sites that were still in the running
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A copy of our Fiche Factory master Excell, without the contact details of the owners (for reasons of privacy)
We would like to avoid that these precious data end up in the hands of commercial actors, so we’d be grateful if you can help us with that.
Other than that we also have a post with some further details and public access to some of our manuals etc: From scouting to purchasing a site: the process step-by-step