Margaret Mead wrote, “The first thing we have to get rid of is this horrible independent little misery called the suburban home. It is using up an unprecedented amount of hardware, creating an unprecedented amount of pollution, and producing unhappy people.”

In response to this and as a reaction to the ‘self-contained’ suburban home, the proposal is a communal setting for ten households for women and children.

The commune was developed within the context of activist and architect Leslie Kanes Weisman’s research into women’s fantasies about the home. This research discerned that women were not satisfied with their homes. They desired a closer connection to nature, natural domestic materials, more shared spaces with people beyond their families and the desire for homes that could be adjusted. Responding to these desires, the project proposes a new way of living that provides the conditions for radical kinship. In this new way of living, everyone ‘mothers’ each other and domestic labour is shared and visible.

The building is located on Oliver’s Island, a narrow island in West London within the Thames. The building reconsiders the components of a ‘self-contained’ home by proposing a series of shared spaces that are changeable in function and size.