Casa Zimbabwe

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Casa Zimbabwe, commonly referred to as CZ, is a student housing cooperative in Berkeley, California housing 124 residents. It is part of the USCA co-op system.

Casa Zimbabwe

Located at 2422 Ridge Road, the house is a mere block from the center of the northern edge of the University of California, Berkeley campus. The brown stucco fortress overlooks North Gate, and the two accessible roofs provide an excellent view of San Francisco, the East Bay, the Berkeley Hills, and most of campus. It sits on what is referred to as the "Holy Hill", the area surrounding a five-way intersection surrounded on all sides by churches and seminaries, such as the Graduate Theological Union. The USCA central office and central kitchen are located within the Casa Zimbabwe building, but they only connect to the main residential area by a few doors.

The residents of Casa Zimbabwe are affectionately referred to as Czars.

[edit] History

While every other USCA house was a pre-existing structure eventually converted into a co-op, CZ is unique in that it was built from scratch with the specific intent of being used as a cooperative living space. One only has to wander through the house for proof.

The house is divided into three segments. Residents' rooms are located in the east and west wings (known as the "10s" and the "100s" for the room numbering scheme used), both of which are connected in the middle by two stories of wide open common space. Such a layout seems to encourage social interaction more so than in some other houses.

Further evidence of having been built as a student co-op is the strange architecture. As the legend goes, the architects had originally designed the building to look more normal, like the campus dorms. Since many former dorm-residents move into the co-ops to escape the sterility of dorm life, the architects were asked to re-design the house to look less dorm-like.

The inexplicable asymmetry of the building structure seems to corroborate this story. While the east wing is three stories tall, the west wing is four stories and is offset downward by half a floor. The stairwells look like their corners were chopped off as an afterthought, and none of the halls are perfectly straight.

When CZ opened in 1966, it was known as "Ridge Project" since it shares its lot with Ridge House. In 1987, the house residents successfully petitioned to change the house name to its current one, originally intended as a parody of some alternative exotic-sounding proposals. In 2001, the residents declared the house to be Sovereign (though this has never been recognized by anyone outside of the house). In 2002, the residents petitioned to change the name of the house to Krackistan, but the USCA Central Office rejected the proposal outright.

Casa Zimbabwe is scheduled to close at the start of Spring 2007 to perform major seismic retrofitting work. The house is scheduled to reopen in Fall 2007.