Author: Meena Murugappan

At Studio Organo, we are exploring a new product type for Rurban Living. 

An interesting question arose from our internal conversations about a group of urban families and their unmet need to live away from the density of city living and be closer to nature, while also being frugal with their investment. For such families that need to be anchored in urban neighbourhoods, what would their weekend home be? For families wanting to reduce their carbon footprint but increase their happiness footprint, what would their rurban home be? For families wanting to invest in themselves, while also building their wealth, experience and health, how does the neighbourhood function? 

During design explorations and early user interviews, we came up with a typology called the Rurban Lofts. Through our previous experience, we have seen that a healthy neighbourhood size with strong social bonding and interactions is about 200 families, +/-. 

Ideally, they are low-rise communities that have visual and physical proximity to Earth, local Flora and Fauna. 

As a weekend home for frequent visits, these homes can be approx. 900 sft homes with large outdoor balcony, private bed area, flexi-spaces for living, dining, cooking, guest bed, 3 piece bathrooms and ample storage. 

We are imagining these homes to be extroverted homes, which pull the family members to spend time outdoors, exploring the neighbourhood food forest, swimming pond, walking trails, cycling paths, outdoor gym, soft play areas, meditation zones, co-working spaces, work-from-forest spaces, and similar fitness and social amenities. We love frameworks here at Studio Organo. For this product type, we are organising these ideas on a framework called Thrive, which stands for Together, Health, Relax, Inspire, Vibrant and Eat. 

Because we believe that: 
Rurban Lofters want to Thrive. 
Right here.
Right now.
They don’t want to postpone their dream living for later.

Watch this space for more insights on this rurban community as we develop the design of this typology!

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