Construction Maison

Marie Veis has what she calls a “no risk, no fun attitude.” It was this spirit that compelled her and her partner, Roland Hofer, to leave behind their recently renovated apartment and buy a nearby rundown wine tavern that had fallen into bankruptcy. They had been living not far from the tavern in the upscale Austrian spa town of Baden bei Wien , about 20 miles southwest of Vienna. The property consisted of a ramshackle two-story, 19th- century house facing the street and a concrete-and-wood pavilion in the courtyard. The tavern owner lived in the house, and drinkers gathered in the rustic pavilion. By 2011, the compound was in receivership, and the couple figured the $410,700 asking price was a bargain. Ms. Veis, now 40, and Mr. Hofer, now 39, decided to tear down the pavilion and build a new three-story villa on the property, with a funky, wide- open floor plan and freewheeling finishes. They kept the small historic home , with plans to turn it into a studio later. For now, it i...

More prosaically, co-living can simply mean roommates and common rooms, like a dorm. For some developers, it’s a form of adaptive reuse: many co-living sites, like WeLive at 110 Wall Street , are leased, in this case from the landlord of what once was an office building, drained of its tenants by Hurricane Sandy. Slide Show Adventures in Co-Living Credit Photographs by Andrew White for The New York Times There are still co-living evangelists, like Brad Hargreaves of Common, who has promised that “the genuine and organic relationships our members build with each other,” as he wrote in a post for Medium, would not be tainted by allowing journalists to sleep over at Common properties (though they were welcome to tour). With over $23 million in financing, Common now operates in five cities, including out of eight houses in New York City. Some co-living ventures have collapsed under the weight of their ideals, like the utopian Pure House , started by Ryan Fix, now 42, in his Williamsburg l...