Co-Liv was never a company. It was a bet that the people building shared living, competitors on paper, would go further as one community.
In Brooklyn, Ryan Fix runs an 80-person coliving community called Pure House. The lesson he draws from it: what makes these places work is not the building, it is the practice of living together. To spread that practice he founds Purehouse Lab, a collective of founders and designers thinking out loud about shared living.
Purehouse Lab convenes the first-ever coliving summit in San Francisco. Operators who had only ever met as competitors spend two days comparing notes. The community has found its format.
The collective registers as a non-profit association in France and publishes Who's Who in Co-Living, the first directory of the industry, authored by Claire Flurin and Fabrice Simondi. Summits follow in New York and Paris, with partners like AccorHotels, Bouygues Immobilier and BNP Paribas Real Estate at the table.
A new name and a restructure quadruple the organization's impact in a year: eight new ambassadors, fifteen events worldwide. Co-Liv sponsors a world tour by Gui Perdrix, who visits coliving spaces on four continents researching what would become The Art of Coliving.
Gui Perdrix takes over as president weeks before the world locks down. An association built on gathering people in rooms moves entirely online, and thrives: 105 virtual events in 2020, 3,500+ attendees, meetups in French, German, Spanish and English, a ten-week professional program, the first university course on coliving at Politecnico di Milano, and a team of ten running it all as volunteers and doers. Reach grows to 10,000 professionals across 25+ countries.
On May 5 and 6, 814 professionals attend the Co-Liv Summit, streamed live from a Paris studio: 34 talks, speakers from 30+ countries, and the first Coliving Awards. The same year Co-Liv launches its Research Forum across six tracks, a tech community, an accreditation project and a 6,000-page resource library.
The Art of Coliving is published through Co-Liv, built on interviews with 200+ organizations. The Summit goes hybrid from Bansko, Bulgaria, under the banner Rise, Radar, Resistance, with 40+ speakers from 15 countries. The network passes 5,000 professionals.
Co-Liv partners with MIPIM, the world's largest real estate event, to open its week with the MIPIM Co-Liv Summit at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes. By December the partnership has grown into Housing Matters!, a full international conference on residential innovation. Coliving is no longer a niche pleading for attention; it is on the main stage.
After four years, Gui Perdrix hands the presidency to Marta Rocamora through a succession the board had prepared for a year. The Co-Liv Report 2024 gathers contributions from MIPIM, UN-Habitat, JLL, CDC Habitat and the housing ministries of Germany and Spain. Housing Matters! runs at MIPIM 2024 and 2025, reaching 1,000 attendees.
Mission one is complete: coliving sits on the global real estate map. Co-Liv keeps supporting the movement, and is charting its new direction, widening from coliving to the broader world of shared living: cohousing, eco-villages, sustainable ways of living together. The network, the library and the door are all open, and the next chapter is being written now.
Coliving is any shared living space that improves the quality of life of its residents. Not a floor plan, a practice.
Co-Liv exists because the housing question, rapid urbanization, unaffordable cities, and an epidemic of loneliness, will not be answered by more of the same. Shared living is one of the few answers that improves the economics and the life at the same time.
Partnerships, press, speaking, or reviving a chapter: the team reads everything.