- Hello!
- We’re Alex and Simmo and we’re looking for co-founders to form a Fractal-inspired group house in Oxford, UK!
- Form to apply here
Our dream group house
1. Fractal-inspired
1a. What is Fractal?
- Fractal began with Fractal NYC
“In 2021, our small group of friends decided to live, learn, and build together in NYC. It started as just a single apartment with weekly dinners where people gave 5-minute talks. And it grew into a neighborhood campus“
1b. Why Fractal?
Power of in-person community
- We’re both believers in both the power of living in community. Simmo is a long-time believer in community and has been nagging me (Alex here, hi!) for years about how it’s clearly the best way to live, and I’ve been convinced of this recently (much to my chagrin at admitting that Simmo was right all along)
- Appendix - where we’ve lived
Intentional communities are great but ephemeral
- We’ve both lived in intentional communities around the world (France, Spain, Portugal, Bali), and find that whilst they offer great short-term connections, they are by their nature ephemeral (visa issues, high turnover). We want the benefit of intentional community living, over the span on multiple years, not just multiple months
- 👇 the two of us at Ship It Week 😎
Reversing atomisation
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Modern life is very atomised, and Fractal is a model for “rebuilding civic society”
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But also, we don’t want to get too heady/over-ambitious about it, really we want to start by building a great group of friends, and then see what develops from there!
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See Evelyn’s tweet of “do you want x or do you just want a friend group”
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Appendix - great talk by Tyler Alterman at Fractal → “Fractal’s emerging civic society”
1c. What does a Fractal-inspired group house look like?
- Our initial plan is a centrally located group house to act as a third space for people to come hang out
- From there, we can grow to do things like group classes
- See Priya’s “How to Start a School With Your Friends”
- See Mosaic’s Mosaic University page
- See FractalNYC’s FractalU: Fall Semester 2025 page
- And helping set up more group houses within walking distance
- Borrowing an image from Mosaic:
1d. How do we set up a Fractal-inspired group house?
- We’re on the waitlist for Tyler & Priya’s Campus Accelerator Program (was due to start on 1st Sep 2025 but was delayed)
- We have friends who have started Fractal-inspired hubs
- Mosaic in London → recommend checking out their site!
- Weave Toronto
- We’re also connected to Tyler/Priya/Andrew (the 3 main FractalNYC people) and have links to Portal
- Other Fractal hubs
2. Location
- We want to be as close to the centre as possible, to make it easy for people to visit!
Near other group houses?
- The Vicarage (group house) is in New Hinksey
3. The vibe
- Communal meals
- Weekly hosting
- Authentic Relating, Circling
- Dance, music
- Mix of introversion and extroversion. Not too heady, not too woo