co(ntagious) living: co-living in estonia during "corona times"
egemen mercanlioglu
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As I begin this text, I am sitting in a 40 square metre communal room called “Quiet Room”, located at the 8th floor of a co-living “startup” in Tallinn, Estonia - Larsen Apartments. Filled with all ergonomic looking office tables and chairs, decorated with plants and gigantic pillows tossed on the floor; the room is at once a place of work and room for leisure. Currently, the space is shared with six neighbours and the room is far from being quiet. But that is not the only problem.
prologue
The prefix “co” is being challenged in this unit of co-production and co-emergence because of the havoc caused by the pandemics. Rules of self-quarantine and social distancing have not really stopped most of the Larsenners to congregate. Admittedly, co-living offers a much-needed community during confusing times but still, it poses unavoidable challenges. Fifteen square metre living units are unlivable without communal spaces which make physical distancing all but impossible. Door handles, elevator buttons, toilet seats, office tables and others: all are common touch-points. Hygiene, previously tolerable, became detrimental.
Co-living resembles more what I propose co(ntagious)-living during “corona times”. Although neither infectiousness of the household nor living together are new phenomenons, co-living is unique: already existing societal contradictions and urban inequalities that are hidden behind non-unique and depersonalized hipster aesthetics that characterize these spaces imploded with the pandemics. In what follows, I will try to open up complexities that are exacerbated and made visible by the virus. My aim is to display contradicting values of hipster aesthetics: e.g. “shared values” of a lifestyle vs. socioeconomic segregation. To better situate the case, I will focus on one of the first co-living units in Tallinn, Estonia.
how co-living ended up in Tallinn?
The shift towards knowledge and creative industries since the late seventies resulted in spatial outcomes in western societies. The rise of precarious labour has been imposing challenges on cultural geographies of home and domestic architecture. The increasing number of what architect and theorist Pier Vittorio Aureli called “domesticized workplaces” proliferated the idea to transform the office into housing.
The dialectical relationship between the economy and house has been epitomized by co-living. Often catered to the specific needs and taste of the so-called “Millenials,” co-living is the new commodified form of shared housing (Bergan et al. 2020). It spreads predominantly in areas with burgeoning new technology and start-up “ecosystems”, and redesigns domestic life in relation to the demands of work (Musilek 2020, 23-24).
How do these questions play out in the context of Estonia: “a small Baltic country described by pundits as Europe’s Silicon Valley?” (Krivy 2019, 75-90). Having been part of the Soviet Union, the country has been distinguishing itself aggressively by “assimilating governing rationalities of the smartness mandate” (Krivy 2019, 77). These policies date back to the epochal fast track transition from state socialism to neoliberal capitalism in the early nineties where most of the public assets, including housing, were privatized. While the housing privatization that started in 1994 privatized 96 percent of the housing stock in Tallinn to the sitting tenants, it laid the foundations for the vastly segregated housing market and left too little room for the rental sector (Kährik and Kõre 2013, 163).
The spatial outcomes of the housing reform are intertwined with the idea of a digitally networked society. Marked by an entrepreneurial subjectivity, the small Baltic state is a pioneer in converting public services into flexible e-solutions. State-initiated startups, such as e-government and e-residency, vow the politics of flexible governance. While the country of e-everything is self-branding itself as “start-up paradise” (Vabamäe and Lilles 2007), Tallinn becomes increasingly attractive to live and study for foreign “Millenials”. Having a hypermobile lifestyle, these people do not tend to buy their own properties. In a housing market as Tallinn’s where the owner-occupation rate is one of Europe’s highest, “Millenials” strive to live together in order to formulate and practice a lifestyle defined by the hypothetical shared values. It is against this backdrop that Estonia’s private real estate developers are rushing into the co-living sector.
eduard house by larsen apartments
Larsen Apartments is one of the initial cases of co-living in Tallinn. Unsurprisingly, foreign “Millenials” mostly inhabit the building. The eight-floor building is located in Mustamäe: one of the eight districts in Tallinn. The district hosts the flagships of Estonian engineering and technology education, including the Tallinn Technical University, Tehnopol, Skype and other high-tech companies. Thus, Mustamäe is favourable amongst young professionals and students.
Larsen Apartments calls its brand new building by an Estonian name Eduard. A tech-enabled smart building, Eduard is covered by sensors. Water meters, pumps, fire alarms, power, lighting are all connected, and doors open with a Bluetooth key. The building embraces the idea of hybridity in living units and the so-called “easy living” is its core value. The house provides opportunities for effortless socialisation, easily accessible leisure activities, and helping with tiring and mundane aspects of everyday domestic labour. Offering a wide range of services from cleaning to laundry, inhabitants are encouraged to spend their time on “things that matter”.
It is true that the Larsen Apartments is targeting the so-called “Millenials”. However, this category of people by no means comprise an even stratum: it encompasses hypermobile young professionals, entrepreneurs and students based in global cities, but it also includes foreigners of developing countries lacking the financial firepower of living in the eurozone. Trapped in financial disparities and stigmatized as “non-occidentals”, the second group is short-handed when it comes to housing. They stuck in between restricting environments of dormitories and an overpriced rental sector where tenants are unwilling to rent their apartments to non-Europeans. To them, Larsen Apartments’ Eduard is a sound option.
Spatial patterns of socio-economic segregation that shape Tallinn’s urbanism are also present in the eight-floor building. Eduard has four different residential units: Shared, Shared Plus, Private and Private Plus. While each typology differs in affordability, size and elements of privacy, different social categories inhabit these. Scattered to different floors, two main social groups, young professionals and students, have subcategories. Each interconnects and overlaps in communal spaces: lounge, “Quiet Room,” and terrace. Furnished and decorated differently for different uses and users, different groups gather in shared spaces at different time periods of the day.
Already existing inequalities amongst Larsenners became more visible during “corona times” when all educational establishments were closed, and most of the corporates and entrepreneurs were compelled to work from home. Ironically, jumping from one online meeting to another, the sheer number of daily interactions of some of the Larsenners has increased dramatically since the health crisis. While some of the inhabitants have access to all private spaces and amenities such as private wifi, others are lacking those and obliged to shuffle in between communal spaces. Furnished with eye-pleasing, leisurely and hipster furniture; everyday objects, surfaces and surfaces of surfaces in communal spaces cement the anxiety of living together while being the main materials of “homemaking”, though anonymous and depersonalized.
The lounge provides a good case. Although looking nice and neat from a distance, the space is more like an IKEA showroom than a home. It is furnished with comfy couches and matching coffee tables. Wooden bookshelves that surround the space are decorated by carefully picked plants to bring out the colour of the minimalist interior. Undoubtedly, the lounge was imagined as a room for leisure. Having always been a place to congregate for residents, the lounge has assumed hybrid functions during the outbreak: office in the morning, party room in the night. The space has been mostly used by master’s students and corporates in the morning shuffling in between online meetings. In the night, the room hosts “occasional” parties organized and participated allegedly by students.
Ever since the pandemics, the Larsen Apartments’ employers avoid visiting Eduard unless “something urgent” occurs. Cleaners do the cleaning only once every week. Sitting in the lounge, one could see traces of negligence. Most of the plants are dying of thirst and those who don’t are plastic. Lamp-shades and coffee tables are crooked and granite floors are often sticky; all reminiscent of a rough night. Smells like vodka and french fries, the couch is not as comfortable as it looks. Having overtones of wine splashes all over, putting the laptop on the coffee table is not as straightforward and requires wiping even though superficial. Here in the lounge, a shared toilet is at once the embodiment of neatness yet spoiled with urine.
Since the outbreak, it has become habitual for some residents to report their neighbours to the management for threatening their lives by not being careful enough and not following the so-called “two plus two rule”. There have been a few cases where some of the inhabitants utter their complaints to students having their online lectures in the lounge for congregating of necessity. In one extreme case, an anonymous resident allegedly reported a house party to the Tallinn City Government and the police forces made an official report. As a result, the organizers of the party were fined some 500 EUR. As of 8th of May, all communal areas, except the “Quiet Room,” were closed.
back to where i started
I have been sitting in the “Quiet Room” for a while now. The space has gotten populated since I began writing and it is even less quiet. The room is defined by management as a place where “genius ideas, cum laude, brainwork, creativity boost and mental peace” are born. Inhabited mostly by master’s students from developing countries, the space is effectively a study room. Plain and simple. Now that the lounge is closed, we all rely on the “Quiet Room”: a room that is dyed with entrepreneurial spirit, blessed with fast internet. Squeezed in a forty square metre room, around thirty students share the space at different intervals everyday. We sit wherever available let alone keeping the two metre distance. Sitting at all ergonomic looking chairs, we share our tables with far gone plants.
Designed to accommodate the figure of entrepreneur; leisurely furniture and decorative materials in the communal spaces implode to expose already existing inequalities. In their “contagiousness”, communal spaces bring together different social groups and categories in the building through everyday objects and surfaces. Being common touch-points, these materials were supposed to turn Eduard into a home. Instead, they confront their residents. The fear of coronavirus hasn’t driven most of the residents to move out from Eduard. The imaginary social cohesion born out of a shared lifestyle seems to be, however, torn into pieces.
References
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Bergan, Tegan, Gorman-Murray, Andrew and Power, Emma. 2020. “Coliving housing: home cultures of precarity for the new creative class.” Social & Cultural Geograph.
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Kährik, Anneli and Kõre, Jüri. 2013. “Estonia: Residualization of Social Housing and the New Programs.In Social Housing in transition Countries.” In Social Housing in Transition Countries edited by Jozsef Hegedus, Martin Lux and Nora Teller, 163-179. Routledge.
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Krivy, Maros. 2019. “The Smart and the Ruined: Notes on the New Social Factory.” Thresholds 47, 75-90.
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Vabamäe, Kristi and Lilles, Kadi-Ingrid. 2017. “Why is Estonia a Startup Paradise?” E-Estonia, August 2017.