04/29/2026
Comfort In Common: Redefining communal space in student housing
Student: Minhee Kim .space
This thesis reimagines student housing as a shared landscape shaped by comfort, choice, and everyday interaction. Emerging from lived experience in post-pandemic dorm life, the project questions rigid spatial systems, such as long corridors, identical rooms, and underused lounges that force a divide between isolation and exposure. Instead of treating communal space as a single, fixed room, it proposes a continuous gradient that extends across the building.
Inspired by the spatial softness of Central Park, the design introduces “nooks” as micro-environments that create subtle transitions between public and private. These layered spaces allow students to move fluidly between solitude, focus, and connection, supporting diverse modes of living within one environment. Through shifts in scale, material, and light, communal space becomes adaptable and emotionally responsive.
By distributing shared space across hallways, rooms, and in-between zones, student housing is redefined as a micro-city where belonging emerges not from programming, but from spatial nuance and everyday presence.
1. Ceramic model exploring how communal space can emerge in the in-between.
2. Hallway Nook. The corridor shifts from circulation to occupation, opening pockets where movement softens into rest, and privacy becomes adjustable.
3. Laundry Lounge. A laundry routine reimagined as a social moment. What was once a space for just waiting becomes an interior of social nooks for lingering, conversation, and comfort.
4. Art Studio. An underused studio reconfigured. Instead of a single open room, the space breaks into focused pockets that allow students to settle in and immerse themselves in their work.
5. The gradient between public and private continues within the residential unit. Sleeping, gathering, and retreating unfold across different niches, forming layered moments of comfort.
6. A tactile palette developed through clay and glaze experimentation. By testing finishes, the study explores how softness, porosity, and reflection shape a quieter, more intimate interior atmosphere.
