Architecture Bulletin / Housing for all / Vol. 80 No. 2 / 2023-24 by Australian Institute of Architects

Architecture Bulletin VOL 80 / No. 2 / 2023-24

housing for all Diversity matters 2023-24 NSW ARCHITECTURE AWARDS

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ARCHITECTURE BULLETIN VOL 80 / NO 2 / 2023-24 Official journal of the NSW Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects since 1944. The Australian Institute of Architects acknowledges First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands, waters, and skies of the continent now called Australia. We express our gratitude to their Elders and Knowledge Holders whose wisdom, actions and knowledge have kept culture alive. We recognise First Nations peoples as the first architects and builders. We appreciate their continuing work on Country from pre-invasion times to contemporary First Nations architects, and respect their rights to continue to care for Country.

FOREWORD 05 Adam Haddow E D I TO R I A L 06 Michael Zanardo Kieran McInerney housin g for all 10 A home to be nude in Words: Emily Wombwell 14 Apartment as home Words: Rachel Neeson and Stephen Neille 18 Learning and teaching the value of housing Words: Caitlin Condon, Tara Sydney and Justine Anderson 21 No time to demolish Words: Alex Jones 24 Feelings of home and its architecture Words: Kevin Hwang and Caleb Niethe 26 Urbanising Australian suburbia: Projecting the work of Peter Myers Words: Angelo Korsanos 30 Housing landscape: Borrowing from Peter Myers Words: Peter McGregor and Illustrations: Carme Serrano

34 Enough space Words: Alicia Pozniak

70 Housing and policy Words: Lisa King

36 History rarely repeats, but it can rhyme Words: Ben Guthrie

2 0 2 3 national ARCHITECTURE AWARDS – N S W W inners

40 The impact of housing on street character and urban liveability Words: Koos de Keijzer and Gemma MacDonald

74 Awards and commendations

44 (Don’t) do It yourself Words: Neil Mackenzie, Heidi Pronk and Richard Healey-Finlay 48 Transforming social housing: A holistic approach to housing the chronically mentally ill Words: Penny Collins 50 Alternative housing ideas Words: Andrew Scott and Anita Panov

2 0 2 4 N S W countr y division winners 89 Awards and commendations 2 0 2 4 N ewcastle A wards winners 101 Awards and commendations p rovoke 111 First Nations affordable housing and community centre Words: Jessica Van-Young

54 Social housing: In brief Words: Stephen Cox and Dan Szwaj 58 The search for the sustainable home Words: Tone Wheeler 62 The architecture of housing: Obligations and opportunities Words: Philip Thalis 66 Small changes making a big difference – place based microzoning Words: Abbie Galvin

FOREWORD / ADAM HADDOW

We deliver two types of housing with ease in Australia, land release – the sprawl at the edges of our cities, and high-density towers – clustered around transport interchanges in our inner cities. While we deliver these two typologies in abundance, neither of them can answer all our housing needs – continuing our march outwards simply condemns people to a life of disconnection and commuting, while inner high-rise density offers limited choice – mostly high-cost apartments catering to aging Boomers or upwardly mobile professionals. What we need is something in the middle, more housing in existing suburbs to combat the lack of variety – with the goal of supporting more diverse communities. If housing becomes prohibitively expensive in one area, those earning less will move further away. But when multiple suburbs are too expensive, people stop working at the local supermarket, stop applying for jobs at the medical center, or apply for a teaching job at another school. As a result, you’re travelling to the grocery store and to medical appointments five suburbs away – even though your neighbour’s a doctor, their practice had to move so that they too can access staff. As time goes on the only people left in your suburb are older people who got in early. Now they’re old and there’s no one to help around the house, so they decide that it is time to move to something more manageable, but there’s been no development in the suburb for decades – so they too move away. Away from friends, away from community, away from the places they love. So instead of the twilight years of life spent enjoying the people and place they loved, they end up somewhere else surrounded by people they don’t know. We must find ways to infill new and diverse housing in existing suburbs. We must look not only to the character of the suburb but also towards the character of society. We are all better when everyone is looked after. Design is part of the solution – and in that aspect as a profession we can help. We have a stark choice – continue our current path and end up in a divided society, where homelessness and sleeping rough will become

more prevalent, or choose something different, something more equal, where more of us from more diverse backgrounds live closer together. It’s time we fold a new layer into our suburbs that includes social, affordable and market housing. Public housing facilitated by government, affordable housing delivered across market and government, and market housing delivered by business. We need to revolutionise our attitudes – moving from ‘what’s bad about this development’, to ‘let’s find the good’. We need to consider underdevelopment as a crime against our communities, because ultimately our communities are our friends and family – and they are struggling. Of course, we should demand excellence, fairness, and equity. But we also need to make the road to housing delivery easier. Mostly when we’re seeking significant shifts in society we look to the government for policy change – for levers to be pulled: a tax incentive to speed up investment, or a planning tweak to expedite approvals. What we often forget is that we can be the change – as active participants on design review panels, in courts as experts, as consent authorities within local and state government, and as leaders and advocators for design in government and their agencies, to name just a few. The architectural diaspora is vast, if we are serious about delivering sustainable housing outcomes to drive a more equitable society, we must activate the collective. We must pivot from our well-worn position of critic to that of enabler. We need to be bluntly realistic with our clients about what is appropriate, but to also suggest and advocate for variations to controls where impact is limited. We need to reword our advice from the negative to the positive – to find the solution rather than identifying the problem. Design excellence can be achieved if we pivot to an environment of active, collaborative, and supportive advocacy. It will mean not sweating the small stuff – focusing on the 95% that is good, rather than the 5% that isn’t. My grandfather’s most useful advice was “if you watch the cents the dollars will take care of themselves”, perhaps in the case of housing we need to remind ourselves that every dwelling matters! ■

Adam Haddow RAIA NSW Chapter President

ENTRIES NOW OPEN 2024 Chapter Architecture Awards architecture.com.au/awards Art Gallery of NSW Library and Members Lounge | Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects | Photographer: Cieran Murphy

E D I T O R I A L / michael z anardo

In the introduction to the April 1992 volume of Architecture Australia, architect Peter Myers (1941-2023) declared that “the demise of the isolated dwelling type is now imminent” and that “only the rich can still afford the dubious luxury of propinquity.” Myers’ proclamation was prescient. Thirty years on, Sydney and its regions have become one of the most expensive places to live on the planet. It is clear that we can no longer continue to indulge the low-density suburban dream that makes our places so spatially inequitable. We must move to more urban alternatives for living. Myers also then asks us “how does one begin to define a new urban housing architecture for Australia?” This question has now become a crucial one for us to truly turn our minds to. The articles in this issue of the NSW Architecture Bulletin have been curated to explore ideas central to the development of such housing. How can we design our urban housing for living together better? What makes housing good at different densities and scales? What housing types do we need to serve all parts of our communities with dignity? What aspects of housing design elevate the lived experience? How can our

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Emma Adams

DESIGNER Andrew Miller

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Matilda Gollan (Co-chair) David Welsh (Co-chair) Cate Cowlishaw Nathan Etherington Sarah Lawlor Kieran McInerney

PUBLISHER Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter 3 Manning Street Potts Point, Sydney NSW 2011

guest editorS Kieran McInerney Michael Zanardo Communications and Awards Co-ordinator Melena Dirou CREATIVE DIRECTION Felicity McDonald

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housing contribute positively to the street and to the city? And how do we address the perennial challenges of affordability and sustainability? The contributions in this issue are valuable offerings that further this conversation to enrich our culture of housing design. We extend a sincere thank you to the authors for their generosity in sharing their knowledge, viewpoints, ideas and experiences to redirect us, inspire us, encourage us and challenge us to reconceptualise and improve our ideas of housing. We hope that these articles, as Myers had similarly wished, will “generate wider debate” and provide “some workable answers” to the design of suitable housing for all into the future. ■

Michael Zanardo Guest editor

_____ Dr Michael Zanardo is an architect, urban designer and director of Studio Zanardo, an independent and collaborative design consultancy working at the intersection of policy and built form and specialising in the design of housing, particularly social and affordable housing.

REPLY Send feedback to bulletin@architecture.com.au. We also invite members to contribute articles and reviews. We reserve the right to edit responses and contributions. ISSN 0729 08714 Architecture Bulletin is the official journal of the Australian Institute of Architects, NSW Chapter (ACN 000 023 012). © Copyright 2023. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher, unless for research or review. Copyright of text/images belong to their authors. DISCLAIMER The views and opinions expressed in articles and letters published in Architecture Bulletin are the personal views and opinions of the authors of these writings and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Institute and its staff. Material contained in this publication is general comment and is not intended as advice on any particular matter. No reader should act or fail to act on the basis of any material herein. Readers should consult professional advisers. The Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter, its staff, editors, editorial committee and authors expressly disclaim all liability to any persons in respect of acts or omissions by any such person in reliance on any of the contents of this publication.

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E D I T O R I A L / K iera n M c I n er n e y

Reading through this edition a consensus can be recognised; NSW Government Architect Abbie Galvin, NSW RAIA president Adam Haddow, former City of Sydney councillor Professor Philip Thalis and architect broadcaster Tone Wheeler agree that medium-rise high density is the most promising and effective housing model. Medium-rise housing is four to six storeys high. High-rise apartments relate to the sky and views, medium-rise engages with street activity and landscape, while diminishing the effects of overshadowing and overlooking. And at densities of 150 to 300 dwellings per hectare, as in the Potts Point area of Sydney is where shops and other facilities can be sustained. But why is there density dread, density disappointment? Partly because the word “dense” tends to mean “compressed”. It does not adequately describe the layers of information, people, facilities and networks that make a city. We need a better metaphor. Could we re-consider compact? Which is defined as “closely packed together, dense”. Neatly fitted into a restrictive space. Concise, brief. Wellconstructed: solid, firm and also “an official contract or agreement”.1 Everyone can appreciate a well-packed bag, a well-arranged wardrobe or pantry. A place for everything, and everything in its place, we can all agree on that! Compact is more than density, it means well considered and made, it means designed. Can we have a compact to be compact? On Peter Myers Peter Myer, who passed away earlier this year in 2023, had a career that could be a template for contemporary ethical practice: writing, conservation work, social housing design, prefabricated housing, sustainable materials and work for Indigenous clients, notably the Keeping Place, Tiwi Island.

Peter proposed a city model that starts with nature. Demolish Sydney’s flimsy suburban houses but keep the block and street layout of Sydney’s sprawling suburbs preserving “the landscape inventories of suburban Sydney for what they are: works of art of the most profound importance”. Peter describes the First City2, the 60,000-year-old civilisation that “British insurgents” encountered which included up to 12-metre-high shell middens. The settler Second City was built on top of the first and was also built out of the first, removing and using the vast shell middens for lime mortar. The “vast suburban grid of the Second City” did however maintain large areas of open space and forest. And this is the generator of the Third City – up to six-storey apartment buildings built only on the footprints of the existing houses, “temporary housing in a permanent landscape”.3

Kieran McInerney Guest editor

Peter’s Third City consoles us; we haven’t had enough time to destroy the environment completely, and that by recognising and preserving the beauty and spirit of Australian landscape, we may, settler and original inhabitants together, leave our separate stories and achieve “one history together” as stated so memorably by Jonathon Jones in his recent Sydney Town Hall address.4 ■ _____ Kieran McInerney’s architectural practice in Sydney includes single houses, multiple housing, urban design and ocean pool design. As an employee Kieran worked on housing projects in London and in Sydney including Macarthur Street Affordable Housing and Waterloo Co-Housing (for Rod Simpson and TZH). He was part of the team for the Egan Street Apartments which was awarded the Aaron Bolot award in 2006. In 2012, he used his Byera Hadley Scholarship to make timelapse movies of high-density environments.

Notes 1

Concise Oxford Dictionary

2,3

Peter Myers, “The Third City”, Architecture Australia, Jan/ Feb 2000, p.80

Jonathan Jones “Living Heritage: sites, objects, language, plants and sky”, speech, 4 September 2023, Sydney Town Hall.

Lumina, Penrith | DKO | Photo: Ben Guthrie

Housing for all

H ousin g for all

A home to be nude in Words: Emily Wombwell

My own experiences of living in apartments have all been under very different circumstances – firstly with two housemates in a three-bed and then on my own in a studio apartment. Next in a two-bed with a partner and a dog, and then we added a baby into the mix. I often draw upon these memories when designing apartment buildings and consider the different people that will live in them by asking critical questions of every space. A successful apartment is one that allows many people to make the same spaces feel like their own. These considerations are critical in ensuring apartment buildings become a more desired housing choice for all Australians. The first question I ask is, how do I make this a home I would like to live in? A home to be found

A home to be nude in

The front door holds our first impressions, from the street interface through to the apartment door handle. Each stage of the homecoming journey can bring moments of clarity, comfort and joy. I like to also consider the experience for less frequent visitors – would my Nan remember how to visit?

While apartment living supports community building, it does not have to sacrifice privacy. The nudity test of the internal spaces helps to consider the non-exhibitionist population. Carefully considered window placement, deep facades, appropriate sill heights and balustrade designs all contribute to the privacy of an apartment. Would I be able to move from the shower to the fridge without being seen?

A home for connections The in-between spaces of an apartment building provide opportunities for developing community among neighbours. Lobbies that invite residents to pause and wait for a friend or centralised fire stairs that are beautiful and entice active movement. Breezeways can provide crossventilation whilst also emulating the traditional front porch where residents that are willing can keep their doors open and interact with the goings on of the corridors. I like to consider if I lived here, would I ever see my neighbours?

249 Darlinghurst Road, SJB. Photo: Saskia Wilson

A home to move around in Often corridors are designed out of apartments for optimal efficiency. I have found that the apartments I enjoy most are the ones with circulation – I love hallways to assist with perceived separation and celebrating movement between spaces. I ask myself; when I walk into this apartment will I see everything at once? Leaving some elements to surprise can be a good thing.

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A home for my stuff Everyday items are ideally stored within or close by, not just in basements. Internally, not all storage requires to be hidden behind doors – open shelves can reduce furniture and allow residents to personalise their home. I like to consider if there are enough blank walls for people to hang photos or art. Laundry also needs a home if apartments are to compete with the amenity of houses – where will I hide my dirty clothes? A home with outdoors Apartments gain identity through their relationship with the outdoors which can make individual experiences and memories of living in the same building very different to one another. One apartment might be practically sitting inside a street tree whilst the next has an expansive view of the local roofscape, or sky. When planning apartments, I find it helpful to think about them in event mode – how will the balcony doors open, and will they be in the way when the place is full of people?

Above: Clarion, SJB Photo: Brett Boardman Top: Newcastle East End Stage 01, SJB Photo: Brett Boardman

H ousin g for all

/ a home to be nude in words: emily wombwell

Above: The Foundry, SJB. Photo:Tom Roe Right: Cleveland Rooftop, SJB. Photo: Felix Forest Far Right: Casba, SJB. Photo: Brett Boardman

ARCHITECTURE BULLETIN

A home for all beings

A home to be remembered

Animals need homes in the city too, from birds to bees to our domestic pets. Designing for pets in apartment buildings means minimising impact on neighbours through easy-to-clean communal floor finishes and outdoor spaces that support animal play. Providing different types of outdoor spaces provides options for all beings and all activities. Where will my dog pee?

Shared spaces contribute to the lives of everyone that lives in or visits a residential building or precinct. Ideally, they can continue to surprise and bring joy despite years of living in a place. Things that we touch or interact with daily deserve to be special or at the very least, well designed. What would my kids remember about living here?

A home for the mind

A home to be loved. It’s in the details. ■

It is easier to live with others in apartments when their layouts are zoned for quiet and noisy activity, supporting various modes at one time. Providing spaces or places that allow the mind to rest or wander is the key to apartments forming a personal oasis in the city. Workspaces can be efficient and still have high amenity – good lighting or a window with a view to somewhere else. Where will I daydream?

_____ Emily Wombwell is a director at SJB’s Sydney Studio. She has led some of SJB’s most notable projects including Newcastle East End, and Quay Quarter Lanes. Beyond her contributions to the built environment, Emily is a passionate mentor and industry advocate, is the co-founder of the speaker series Perspectives and is a curator for TedX Sydney.

Illustration: Emily Wombwell

H ousin g for all

Apartment as home Words: Rachel Neeson and Stephen Neille

The majority of buildings in our cities are our homes, and for an increasing number of Australians, these are apartments. The design of apartment buildings is an exercise in Tetris, balancing the urban envelope with Apartment Design Guide (ADG) design standards, while maximising unit yield. Functional amenity is prescribed and measurable. Diversity is defined by the numerics of unit mix – floor area related to the number of bedrooms, with special provisions for mobilityimpaired adaptability. We are interested in how a diversity of spatial typologies can offer choice and opportunity for different ways of occupying apartments as homes. Described here are two projects where these explorations have been explicit. One is a new apartment building at the periphery of Green Square, pre-dating ADG, the other a row of former social housing units converted to private market housing in Millers Point.

Portman responds to the prescribed urban massing, imagining a fully built block into which voids are carved for air, light and landscape. These incisions allow the deep penetration of sun and increase valuable perimeter, creating corners. Portman explores the corner apartment as a dwelling type. The corner typology, with windows along two sides, enjoys a sense of expanse and dynamic quality of light. Living spaces are given prime corner position with equally sized bedrooms deliberately separated to suit a variety of occupant scenarios – flat mates, couples, families. The wrap-around balcony provides circulation choice. It allows excellent ventilation to bedrooms via sliding doors and expands the scale of rooms through flush thresholds and continuous flooring material. Silver mesh balcony screens are an operational veil, controlling sun, privacy, and exposure, and a lifeful display.

PORTMAN apartments Portman occupies an entire block at the southern perimeter of Green Square, once part of a broad wetland on Gadi Country. To the immediate south is a conservation area of small-scale warehouses and fine-grain worker cottages. To the immediate north is a nine-storey apartment building, with taller developments around the Drying Green and Green Square itself. It is a site that needed to mediate between tall density and retained low scale, between big and small, between new and old.

The building is recessed at street level as a zone for gardens, accentuated by green-glazed brick walls, and a painted soffit artwork. Homecoming is through this landscape. Separate east and west entries give address to separate cores and are linked at the ground floor through a shared garden courtyard. The lobbies are naturally ventilated, transparent, shared spaces connected to landscape, that give a sense of safety and wellbeing – a welcome home.

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Portman. Photos: Brett Boardman

Housing for all

/ Apartment as home

words: Rachel Neeson and Stephen Neille

A/P

Lower Fort Street. Photo: Stephen Neille 1 -

0. Ground 1:100

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Former workers dwellings In 2017 the NSW State Government sold a heritage listed row of three-storey walk-up social housing flats in Lower Fort Street and Trinity Avenue, as part of its divestment strategy for former housing commission properties in Millers Point and Tallawoladah / The Rocks. The former workers dwellings were designed by the Government Architect’s branch and credited to architect Walter Liberty Vernon. They were among the last government-built housing in the area prior to the establishment of the Housing Board in 1912, and the only example of mediumrise Dublin Tenement style architecture. The spatial organisation is a raumplan with two completely internal rooms. While each level is identical, its character is distinct, measured against the sandstone cliff – opening into garden at the base of the rock, looking into the face on the mid-level, sitting above the cliff at the top level. The buildings were non-compliant against current access, fire, light, ventilation, and internal room size standards. Arguably, these flats were never fit-for-purpose, with reports at the time describing them as “gloomy in the extreme”.1 Conversion to contemporary private market housing gave the opportunity to rectify what was problematic from the start, while maintaining the benefit of heritage and raumplan. A back-to-back kitchen and bathroom inserted into one of the internal rooms, with high-level glass and mirror, maintains the legibility of the space as a single room and allowing light to penetrate and reflect. The second internal room is retained, borrowing light and air from the adjacent enclosed verandah which has new

translucent louvres for better privacy. The rear additions are replaced with a new well-scaled bedroom looking onto the rear sandstone cliff. Internal connection between the front two rooms – primary living spaces – is enlarged to increase the penetration of light and movement of fresh air. Homecoming is through a breezeway connected to garden, and via historic stairs and a new discrete lift. The external cast-iron stairs are a signature of these buildings, and their social centrepiece. Ultimately, we see apartments as homes, places where amenity is entwined with spatial delight. Portman ties outer worlds and inner worlds into a brilliant field of garden, light and expanse. The former workers dwellings are transformed into a sensuous series of rooms, bound with light and stone. ■ _____ Rachel Neeson FRAIA is founding director of Neeson Murcutt Neille, a medium-sized practice that works across a broad range of project types, including housing. Rachel is professor of practice at UNSW, and member of the City of Sydney Design Advisory Panel. She is the 2022 Marion Mahony Griffin Prize recipient. Stephen Neille is director at Neeson Murcutt Neille. He was formerly director of Perth-based Pendal and Neille, and Chair of Architectural Design Curtin University. Stephen is adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney, and a member of the NSW State Design Review Panel.

Note 1

The Worker (1911), Conservation Management Plan, p116

H ousin g for all

Learning and teaching the value of housing Words: Caitlin Condon, Tara Sydney and Justine Anderson

In the concurrent environmental and societal crisis we face today, housing plays a fundamental role in the balance of social justice. The design of dignified and adequate housing thus needs to be a central skill for the next generation of architects. Traditionally, much of architectural education has taken place in the abstract, often unconcerned with a broader context. Such projects are not without educational value, but when students can engage with real communities and projects, especially those that focus on designing with empathy, they can begin to appreciate how architects can operate as advocates promoting a better and more equitable world. At the University of Sydney, our second-year students have been tasked with designing permanent affordable housing for women at risk of homelessness in nipaluna/Hobart. In 2021/22, seven out of ten women and eight out of ten accompanying children were turned away from Hobart Women’s Shelter (HWS) due to a lack of space.1 There are many reasons why women seek shelter, from domestic violence to years of discrimination and disadvantage, making older women the fastest-growing group facing homelessness today. Across these groups, many deal with compounding factors making it harder to find stable housing, such as disability, single motherhood, and racial inequality, resulting in a multitude of complex needs. HWS is amidst an ambitious project, aiming to construct housing

for 25 additional families by 2024. Already, two dwellings designed by Emily Taylor of Core Collective and Christopher Clinton are under construction. The University has a legacy of teachers including Col James, Anna Rubbo and Paul Pholeros, along with Michael Muir and Michael Mossman who invaluably drive social agendas within the school today. In the current curriculum, this studio is the only in the bachelor degrees providing students with a real-world client. It is one of several studios embedded in Michael Muir’s core second-year unit, titled Let Every Voice Be Heard, where all briefs focus on a different community in need of housing. Students hone design skills by intimately understanding the unique needs of the residents and developing a deep appreciation of place, in this case, where the mountain meets the valley in nipaluna. In this studio, we attempt to reframe how housing is often perceived in Australia, from a means of building wealth to a fundamental human right. In group discussions we unpack what it means to feel safe and understand qualities of spaces that bring us joy, dignity, and empowerment. We’ve invited experts such as Samantha Donnelly, and our client (HWS) to speak to the students. Most of our resources lie outside of architecture, focusing on the women’s personal experiences as we encourage students to think about how their needs can be extrapolated back into architecture as design principles of care, reshaping relations between people and place.

ARCHITECTURE BULLETIN

Students’ work for Hobart Women’s Shelter exhibited in Tapestry, 2023. Photo: Maja Baska

The students have produced flexible and adaptable designs, necessary for affordability and unique user identity and needs. Through the studio, students begin to understand they can design positive spaces for the individual – the dwelling, as well as understand how the relationship born out of their siting strategy can foster community and empathetically accord to the context of the site. All students formulate a set of design principles that synthesise their understanding of the brief, research of social, cultural, and environmental context, site analysis, and spatial planning. They are also required to comply with a set of rules that simplify local planning regulations

and key objectives of best-practice design guides and frameworks (principally the GANSW’s Better Placed, Connecting with Country Framework, and Samatha Donnelly’s Design Guide for Refuge Accommodation for Women and Children). In studio, we run weekly presentations, workshops and forums to actively engage students, fostering reflection and agency in their own design thinking within an inclusive and supportive learning environment. This teaching space allows us to introduce students to the more nuanced topics including traumainformed design and universal design, as well as raise awareness of the importance of careful integration of Country-centred design.

H ousin g for all

/ Learning and teaching the value of housing

words: Caitlin Condon, Tara Sydney and Justine Anderson

Over three cohorts, our students have produced a rigorous body of work that has been passed on to our client. They are deeply proud of their work, as are we. In a reflection exercise, a student from our 2022 cohort wrote, “... These are daunting topics to attempt to tackle, but this studio was a wonderful lesson in how design decisions at nearly every scale can have tangible positive impacts on people’s lives. It was a rewarding experience to work on a brief that felt so real, learning about specific types of design centred not around form but around compassion. Often university briefs can be very loose and subjective, so it was inspiring to be able to engage with a real site, a real client, and most importantly the stories of real people in need of well-designed housing.

_____ Adjacency Studio is a recently established practice, co-founded by Caitlin Condon, Tara Sydney, and Justine Anderson, born out of our collaborative teaching, and our shared and independent research, underpinned by social justice agendas. We believe teaching is an effective way to shape the future of practice and that research and education are tools for innovation, agency and possibility thinking. Our contribution to teaching the value of welldesigned and empathetic housing has been recognised through curation and inclusion in exhibitions Tapestry (2023) and the unsettling Queenstown open archive at the 2023 Venice Biennale.

It was the most meaningful period of learning I have encountered so far in my studies, showing us how we as future architects can directly help people in need and use architecture as a tool for change.” (Ted Dwyer) As we are at a crisis point in society, it is pertinent to find new ways to empower the next generation. Through this studio, we not only see our students engage with the active and effective role they can play in more equitable futures through design, but also recognise the necessity of good design to be championed by architects advocating for and with the community. ■ Photos: Maja Baska

Note 1

Hobart Women’s Shelter, Safe, Quality Homes for Tasmania’s Women and Children Facing Homelessness, (Hobart, 2022).

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No time to demolish Words: Alex Jones

Australia is in a housing emergency. Facing a situation of such complexity and scale, it is important to remember the human impact of inadequate safe housing. Whether that be families sleeping in their cars, the increasing number of working homeless, or people forgoing medical expenses to afford housing. A problem built over decades; the housing emergency will take decades to fix. There is no silver bullet. While increasing supply is touted as the solution, the construction of new dwellings alone does not deal with the immediacy of the issue. If not solved quickly, the housing crisis will rapidly become a homelessness crisis.

With over 57,000 households in NSW on the social housing waitlist1 and 2700 social housing dwellings sitting empty across Sydney,2 immediate wins are possible. The refurbishment and infill of existing social housing, as an alternative to its demolition and reconstruction, presents a fast and scalable way of providing housing while achieving better social, economic, and environmental outcomes. The method is in direct opposition to the prevailing paradigm condemning buildings to be single use at the end of their design life, or worse yet, when no longer considered in vogue.

The Dobell building, designed by Penny Rosier and Tao Gofers, slated for demolition as part of the Waterloo south renewal. Photo: Ben Guthrie

H ousin g for all

/ no time to demolish

words: alex jones

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The Dobell building, designed by Penny Rosier and Tao Gofers.

At a higher level, the attitude towards consumption and disposal has led to a throwaway culture of built form. Across the built environment, expected lifespans of new buildings have reduced by 87 years over the last century.3 With this, the problem becomes twofold: robust buildings are being torn down and replaced with new builds with a shorter lifespan, perpetuating the cycle. When demolishing and rebuilding social housing, there is reduction in the capacity to house people in the short and medium term. Currently undergoing demolition, Sydney’s Arncliffe estate once accommodated 142 public housing dwellings in double-brick walkup apartments.4 Relocations began in 2018 and, outside of being used as emergency accommodation during the pandemic, many have sat empty for years. In their place 180 new social housing and 564 private dwellings will be constructed, set for completion in 2025. While not all existing social housing is viable to retain, common justifications to demolish stock are based on a state of disrepair and/or potential to build an increased number of new dwellings.

Housing that needs maintenance and upgrading is not an argument for its demolition, rather it presents an opportunity to reinvigorate existing spaces and provide amenity. Required dwelling increase can be achieved through design, examining existing structures and surrounding land to build new homes. Through the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship, I had the opportunity to travel throughout Europe to document examples of social housing refurbishments in a report titled Reviving the Block.5 The practise is not a new concept and has been carried out successfully by multiple European governments. The most prominent examples of refurbishment are the multiple works of 2021 Pritzker Prize winning architects Lacaton and Vassal, in collaboration with Frédéric Druot. Other notable examples are the Splayed Apartment blocks by Hans van der Heijden Architects on the outskirts of Rotterdam. This refurbishment considered the ageing population of the existing community and revitalised four modernist towers based on specific tenant needs, avoiding lengthy relocations and demolitions.

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In Australia, Melbourne-based OFFICE architects have developed the retain, repair and reinvest (RRR) model and applied it to the since demolished Barak Beacon Estate.6 The model shows that a refurbishment and infill scheme could have achieved the government set housing target of 350 homes, with a 54% reduction in embodied energy and $86 million dollar saving in construction and relocation costs. The strategy maintained the existing community within the estate, reducing the time to house people. The RRR model provides a framework for an alternative strategy to the recently announced proposal to demolish all 44 social housing towers in Victoria.7

are of quality construction and built to last. The buildings are situated in open plan ground planes, providing ample opportunity for the infill of underutilised land while retaining and refurbishing existing homes.

In NSW, refurbishment and infill programs have been undertaken before, with large-scale renovation of existing social housing stock coupled with new infill housing carried out in the late 1980s to 1990s.8 Refurbishment options have also been tabled for Waterloo Estate with the City of Sydney’s alternative masterplan retaining and refurbishing existing slab blocks and towers while maintaining the existing community through staged infill. A 2014 statewide report found that by 2029, more than half the state-owned social housing stock will be over 50 years old.9 Common typologies of Housing Commission – era buildings are brick walk-ups and towers which

A better way of providing housing is possible. Architects see the potential in the existing and no longer accept a brief that includes the demolition of social housing without a robust investigation into its adaptation and infill. ■

When facing the larger forces that drive the housing market, architecture can feel like it lacks agency. Design solutions can foster better outcomes if we critically analyse the brief in search of better social, economic, and environmental outcomes. It is proven that refurbishment of social housing can achieve these outcomes, so it must be the first course of action when addressing existing stock.

_____ Alex Jones is a social and affordable housing practitioner at Less Stress Studio. The work of the studio focuses on social and affordable housing design and alternate methodologies to delivering better housing.

Notes 1

Social Housing Waiting List Data, https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/housing/help/applying-assistance/social-housing-waiting-list-data#social

https://7news.com.au/video/business/thousands-of-homes-across-sydney-sitting-vacant

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii

https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRRestService

Jones, A Reviving the Block, https://www.architects.nsw.gov.au/download/BHTS/Alexander_Jones_Reviving_the_Block_BHTS_2019.pdf

https://office.org.au/api/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/OFFICE_RRR_Barak-Beacon_Report.pdf

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/wholesale-destruction-of-public-housing-fears-raised-over-tower-knockdowns

https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/dpe-files-production

Social Housing in NSW Discussion Paper, https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au

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Photos: Caleb Niethe and Kevin Hwang

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Feelings of home and its architecture Words: KEVIN HWANG AND CALEB NIETHE

Nowadays, the design of a house (or housing) is often derived from constraints and rationale, measured against its affordability, constructability, functionality and sustainability. But, beneath or beyond, these considerations of practice, we know in ourselves that home is never purely rational, definite and functional. Home is personal and full of feelings. Home is the sun-filled corner of your living room of an ill-insulated terrace house. Or the tiny one-bed apartment shared with your dog and partner just for its view of the city’s extraordinary skyline. The following is an unconventional case study of the home. It is a list reminding us (architects, designers, and residents) of the feelings of home and its architecture in Sydney: the banal, the unexpected, the eventful, and the personal. ■ _____ Kevin Hwang and Caleb Niethe began collaborating during their studies at university. Their work experiments with projects that layer stories, art, and architecture.

Home is a house, a terrace house, a walk-up apartment, a lone federation bungalow in the shadow of density, a penthouse atop a phallus, a run-down motel, a rhythm of rooflines out the window of the train, a dream, a debt, the recliner in a sun-filled living room, the messy kitchen, the staircase turned slippery slide in the eyes of a child, the knock at the door, the warmth of the concrete floor returning the winter sun, the table set for a dinner with friends, the window fighting the southerly, quilt tucked tight, the bed shared with a dog and a lover, the boxed belongings in a truck on the move, the ceiling staring back, this impromptu matinee of eucalyptus shadows on plasterboard, this pitter-patter of rain on the corrugated tin roof, damp air, this mouldy ceiling, this warm shower, this smell of lasagna, mum’s signature dish, this passage from bedroom to bathroom, memorised in the dark, this longing we carry on every trip, this midnight honesty between top and bottom bunk, this crescendo of laughter that fills the room, this forfeit of self, over time, to a building,

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Urbanising Australian suburbia: Projecting the work of Peter Myers Words: Angelo Korsanos

This polarisation in the supply of housing is unsustainable, and what has been posited by recent studies is that mid-rise density can deliver far better outcomes.2 It’s not just that the building types are more environmentally sustainable through greater efficiency of site utilisation, improved landscape outcomes, reduced servicing, and embodied energy, but the associated city form. Applied at scale the uniformity of density facilitates walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods with viable transport implementation, think Paris, Bordeaux, Barcelona. But, unlike these cities, we do not have clear vernacular medium-density housing models and are at a loss (perhaps even fearful) as to how to implement such a scale. Peter Myers at the Zingaro horse circus, Paris, 1991. Photo: Tim Williams

The delivery of housing in Sydney has become increasingly polarised between two streams: detached houses in new suburbs at the periphery of metropolitan Sydney, entrenched with inequitable access to public transport and opportunities for work, horizontal sprawl; and, at the other end of the spectrum, high-rise apartments flanking railway stations or transport corridors are marketed as urban living, often with poor or inadequate amenity for high-density vertical sprawl.1

Between the polar streams of horizontal and vertical sprawl are vast tracts of first iteration suburbs with good regular street layouts, access to transport, parks and established local services and amenities. This is the territory that Peter Myers was concerned with – middle ring Sydney. With his passing, it is timely that we reflect on three seminal works which, considered in unison, posit a clear approach to housing and our cities within the uniquely Australian suburban context.

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The articles ‘Seeking the Section’ (April 1992) and ‘The Third City’ (Jan/Feb 2000) posit a strategy for increased density; contiguous rows of thin cross-section housing tracing the building footprints of the original bungalows. These strategies consolidate what Peter referred to as the permanent landscape within the rear yards of middle ring suburban blocks “the most beautifully tended forest canopy, for as far as one can see…” Is this the key to the suburban dream and the Australian way of life?3 He proposed a section as the generative idea referencing Charles Percier and Pierre-FrançoisLéonard Fontaine’s 1801 cross-section for the Rue de Rivoli for modern Paris. Yet, he was deeply interested in housing typologies and provided the following guidance:

“… it is not just a question of infill housing. It isn’t a matter of building a theme based on what we have got; untold thousands of redundant dwellings that are too expensive to buy and maintain. Rather, what is needed is an entirely new type of housing that can be introduced into existing suburban tracts, and which will, by virtue of its sound common sense, replace the dominant cottage type, more or less, within a generation or two.”4 The Walker Street public housing project in Waterloo (designed by Peter Myers in 1996) explores these ideas over a less typical laneway block. The project fuses two culturally relevant housing types, initiating a contiguous urban block form; by integrating the terrace house (with individual access and private gardens) and the three-storey walk-up5 into a new hybrid model, while consolidating the landscape to the middle of the block.

This drawing for ‘Seeking the Section’ was not included with the original article but was issued at the Institute of Architects with Peter’s presentation of the proposition (colour overlaid by author).

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/ Urbanising Australian suburbia: Projecting the work of Peter Myers

PLAN – Second floor

words: Angelo Korsanos

PLAN – First floor

PLAN – Ground floor

SECTION – Through three typical apartments at the private stair

Drawings of the Walker Street Waterloo housing project collated and reformatted from Peter Myers originals.

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There is a connection between these three works which are integral to Peter’s thinking towards urbanising suburbia within a uniquely Australian context. The housing project contains a diversity of one to four bedroom apartment types, but the density is key. Based on some recent work for GANSW6 with land economists to investigate the failings of the Low Rise Housing Diversity Code, infill development becomes economically viabile at a substitution rate above six to eight dwellings per single dwelling site. This represents a site density of about 100-133 dwellings per hectare over typical middle ring suburban lots. One of the key failings of the ‘missing middle’ apartment types permitted by the Low Rise Housing Diversity Code is that their density is capped at about 50-55 dwellings per hectare, making them unviable for infill7. The Walker Street Housing project represents a site density of 142 dwellings per hectare – the genius of fusing the terrace house to the threestorey walk-up. Such a model, at potentially just three storeys, could have broad application across large tracts of Sydney’s middle ring suburbs in terms of density, built form and landscape. However, the application of such a proposal is severely constrained by legislation and current zoning provisions. What sets Peter’s work apart is a clear vision and understanding of history, housing typologies, local subdivision patterns and the Australian landscape. It poses rich potential for further

Walker Street Waterloo Housing project. Photo: Michael Zanardo

investigation. Sydney could be consolidated over its existing footprint, improving its sustainability, efficiency, social equity, and mitigating its sprawl. Peter was known for saying “ideas are more important than buildings… they last longer”.8 While ideas endure, significant policy reform is required to enable such ambition. ■ _____ Angelo Korsanos is the director of Redshift Architecture + Advocacy and lecturer of practice in architecture at the University of Western Sydney where he is unit coordinator of architectural professional practice and the Housing Design Studios.

Notes 1

Korsanos, A, ‘What’s happened to Medium Density Housing?: A tale told in ABS dwelling approvals data https://www.redshiftaa.com.au/researchadvocacy/whats-happened-to-medium-density-housing, 14 October 2022

Pomponi, F, Saint, R, Arehart, JH et al. Decoupling density from tallness in analysing the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of cities. npj Urban Sustain 1, 33 (2021). The paper notes: “We test this method on case studies of real neighbourhoods and show that taller urban environments significantly increase life cycle GHG emissions (+154%) and low-density urban environments significantly increase land use (+142%). However, increasing urban density without increasing urban height reduces life cycle GHG emissions while maximising the population capacity. These results contend the claim that building taller is the most efficient way to meet growing demand for urban space and instead show that denser urban environments do not significantly increase life cycle GHG emissions and require less land.”

Myers, P, ‘The Third City’ Architecture Australia, (Jan/Feb 2000), Volume 89. No.1

Myers, P ‘Seeking the Section’ (April, 1992) Architecture Australia, Volume 23

The fusion of housing types can be attributed to John Gregory, but Peter Myers adapted the plan by implementing the ‘point access’ arrangement to the upper floors.

Refer separate article by Peter McGregor in this issue of Architecture Bulletin.

Korsanos, A, (2022) “The failure of the ‘Housing Diversity Code’ to deliver housing diversity”, Australian Planner, 58:1-2, 59-62

Williams, T (2023) ‘Nothing is Final: Vale Peter Myers’, https://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/people/nothing-is-final-vale-peter-myers-1941-2023

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Housing landscape: Borrowing from Peter Myers Words: Peter McGregor ILLUSTRATIONS: Carme Serrano

In two of our recent projects looking at new denser housing models within the middle ring suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, we borrowed and applied ideas outlined in the Peter Myers essay, “The Third City” first published in Architecture Australia (Jan/Feb 2000).

Moreland Moonee Valley

Darebin

Marybyrnong

Banyule Manningham

Boroondara

Melbourne

Myers‘ idea was to provide an urban landscape framework at the scale of the street and the block. It was a revelation in that it elevated the permanent landscape of the suburban block, over the dwelling. The removal and replacement of unsustainable post-war housing (16-20 dwellings/hectare), with new mid-rise housing models, while retaining the deep soil and tree cover of the suburban backyard, today seems more relevant than ever. It remains prescient in confronting issues such as urban heat island effect and habitat loss. In our first project, the 2021 Future Homes Housing Competition, Myers’ ideas profoundly shaped our entry. In the second project, Density with Amenity for GANSW, our research into Sydney’s middle ring was informed by both the Future Homes Pattern Book and the permanent landscape.

Whitehorse

Hobsons Bay Port Phillip Bay

Glen Eira

Monash

Bayside Kingston

Inner-ring LGA

Outer-ring LGA

Middle-ring LGA

Growth Area LGA

Future Homes

Hobsons Bay and diversity in the middle ring suburbs of Altona Meadows VIC 3028 Melbourne. It called for a three-level apartment building over two or three amalgamated lots. In preparing our entry we thought that this focused architectural approach, would benefit from an urban design framework at the larger scale of the street and the block.

McGregor Westlake Architecture was one of four teams to win the Future Homes Housing Competition, run by Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, (DELWP) Victoria. The competition was set up to explore new housing models to increase dwelling density

The ideas behind permanent landscape seemed relevant and the first challenge was to see if they would translate to Melbourne’s middle ring. We started by synthesising the idea graphically, into five equal stripes laid over a typical middle ring block, from front fence to back fence.

hold n children

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Stripe 1 / green: the front gardens

Stripe 2 + 3 / orange: the house footprint Stripe 4 / brown: a hybrid of built form and garden Stripe 5 / green: the rear garden The five stripes were then mirror imaged over the back fence to make ten stripes in total. This graphic template was then overlaid onto a range of middle ring suburban blocks and it tested well. The larger trees were predominantly in the green stripes, the houses in the orange. The simplicity of the idea had wide application and real meaning. Like a good diagram, it focused design decisions and placed the whole project within an urban landscape frame at the scale of the block.

Moreland Moonee Valley

Darebin

Marybyrnong

Banyule Manningham

Boroondara

Melbourne

Whitehorse

Hobsons Bay Port Phillip Bay

Glen Eira

Monash

Bayside Kingston

Green

Build

Green/Build

Green

1/5

Inner-ring LGA

Outer-ring LGA

Middle-ring LGA

Growth Area LGA

Moreland Coburg VIC 3058

Hobsons Bay Altona Meadows VIC 3028

Population 88 778 average 2.6 people per household 17.0% families with children average 1.8 children per family with children

Green

Build

Green/Build

Green

1/5

Bayside Highett VIC 3190

Whitehorse Mount Waverley VIC 3149

Moreland Coburg VIC 3058

Population 97 087 average 2.6 people per household 17.1% families with children average 1.9 children per family with children

Population 162 558 average 2.5 people per household 14.4% families with children average 1.8 children per family with children

Population 162 078 average 2.6 people per household 16.6% families with children average 1.8 children per family with children

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/ Housing landscape: Borrowing from Peter Myers

words: Peter McGregor Illustrations: Carme Serrano

In the end, largely due to our adoption and adaption of Peter Myers‘ framework, our pattern book layouts had a consolidated built form, with a deep soil landscape area of 42%. It remains to be seen if the density uplift is large enough to be viable with 14 apartments (FSR .95:1, 117 dwellings / hectare) for the on-grade parking option and 17 (FSR .1.1:1, 142 dwellings/ hectare) apartments for the basement parking. Density with amenity

Kater Place - Existing

Kater Place - Proposed

Density with Amenity was a research project commissioned by GANSW to explore potential housing models with generic application for density across the middle ring of Sydney. The lessons of Future Homes and the ideas of a permanent landscape provided important starting points. One of the great lessons from Future Homes was the limitation of an architectural solution for mid-block lots, due largely to a lack of street frontage and the dominance of side and rear boundary frontage to neighbouring lots. This amplified issues such as setbacks, overshadowing, overlooking, street address and car parking, the latter issue always at the expense of landscape. The pressures of the mid-block lots, combined with a height maximum of three levels, meant there were also pressures on yield.

Kater Place Top: Existing Middle: Proposed Bottom: Proposed Kater Place - Proposed

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We saw the opportunity to leave the mid-block sites and look only at the corners or the blockend as it became known. The block-end gave us more than three times the street frontage of a single lot and less than a third of the interface with neighbouring lots. Development of Class 2 buildings today comes with much complexity and cost; including the HOW for buildings up to three levels, the DBP Act, ADG, NCC, DDA, fire, commercial banking practices, standard development profits, not to mention, NIMBYism and local council controls. The street frontage of the block-end enables a critical mass of density that can look to cover these costs, because street frontage liberates the site planning, bringing flexibility and efficiency to site organisation. Density can increase up to ten-fold. Four single-lot houses can accommodate 44 apartments in a fourlevel form. (FSR of 1.8:1. Or 179 dwellings/ hectare). The south side of the block-end might be a three-level townhouse type, with fourlevel apartment bookends to each side street. (FSR of 1.35:1. Or 138 dwellings/hectare). Both bookends maximise streetscape activation, deep soil landscape (42%), passive surveillance and safety, while minimising the footprint of the car.

Importantly, by increasing the density at select block-ends, local government area housing targets can be largely reached in the development of 7% of lots or less. The pressure to develop mid-block sites is diminished and the potential for the Peter Myers permanent landscape of backyards is further consolidated. What all this work shows is that it is possible to increase density while also improving both public and private amenity. Micro-rezoning along select streets can sleeve higher density through suburban fabric. Density organised by street frontage at the scale of the block, not just lot size and building type. Landscape often overlooked, can flourish and as Peter Myers has shown, become a key driver in shaping city form. ■ _____ Peter McGregor is a founding principal and director of McGregor Westlake Architecture with more than 25 years of experience in architectural and urban projects ranging from mixed-use, multiresidential to public space and public art projects. Carme Serrano is a graduate of architecture from La Salle University of Barcelona, who has over four years of experience in Berlin and nearly six years at McGregor Westlake Architecture.

Notes Revisited in detail by Angelo Korsanos in this edition. All densities are site densities.

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Enough space Words: Alicia Pozniak

There are enough bedrooms across Australia to house our current population, and still leave at least seven and a quarter million spare. Australians are demanding more housing per person than ever before, in terms of extra rooms, holiday homes, multiple properties, many of which are left vacant. But we simply cannot sustain more suburbs with bigger houses. It is time for a wake-up call along the path to net zero – to consider not just carbon laden materials and supply chains, but the carbon toll of wasted space in Australian suburban sprawl. We need desirable alternatives that can attract different households from continuing to invest in suburban homes. We need more diverse and efficient forms of living that provide all our requirements in compact configurations. We need a design revolution for apartment development. The demand for more housing and space has been driven by a combination of factors over a longer period, with a surge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Trends toward smaller households and increased household formation reflect people delaying marriage and children until later in life, higher divorce and separation rates, the breakdown of nuclear families, and longer life expectancies. While flexible working was available before the pandemic, its necessitation during the crisis had Australians experience the benefits of working from home, and the disbenefits of not having the right spaces to do so comfortably. This has profoundly changed the way of work as well as the use of homes and urban environments into the future, and highlighted how much opportunity there is to rethink their design to serve us better. A new series of apartment design case studies were quietly launched by the Department of Planning before the state election developed by Government Architect NSW with MAKO Architecture, and Studio Zanardo. These

case studies are an invaluable resource that demonstrate how residential amenity can be maximised for high-density living under current policy settings. They are an exciting showcase of some of the best recent apartment developments in NSW and provide precedent for architects to leverage further innovation. For apartment buildings to meet today’s housing needs, unit mix must be responsive to local demographics. A higher proportion of larger and family apartments including universal design would increase the number of households that choose more sustainable and better located housing in proximity to jobs and frequent public transport. Architect Natalia Krysiak’s Cities for Play is an invaluable resource and voice in this space. In the absence of local mix controls, architects can work with social planners and councils to determine the right balance of unit types. Lumina Apartments in Penrith (DKO Architecture), incorporates a range of apartment sizes from one to four bedrooms with generous floor areas to accommodate local families and multiple communal outdoor spaces including one with play equipment for children. The conception of the development’s form centred around a series of vertical villages that share lifts between a smaller number of apartments to help foster a sense of community among close neighbours. Generous apartment sizes in the Rochford, Erskineville (Studio Johnston), as well as ground floor units, provide places for families to call home in a quiet inner-city quarter with well-designed and serviced streets. A key innovation are the apartment kitchens located on the buildings’ perimeter that open onto private open spaces. This provides kitchens – usually internalised – with operable windows and a direct relationship with balconies and courtyards, greatly improving lifestyle opportunities. Further afield in regional NSW, Verve Apartments in Newcastle (Hill Thalis), and Water’s Edge

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Apartments on Lake Macquarie (Stewart Architecture), include a higher proportion of larger apartments to encourage downsizers, both young and old, from nearby suburban life into local urban centres. In this changed post-COVID world, it’s worth recalling the last major national review of housing to remind ourselves what’s possible. The post-war reconstruction era saw what was arguably the most progressive social policy document in Australian history – notably led by an architect and urban planner, Walter Ralston Bunning – and its influence on the design of housing to this day. Do we have enough prominent designers in government now to support quality spatial planning, urban design and advocate for policy change? What would be the next wide-scale innovation of dwelling layout in response to local climate and demographic needs? How do we work with current labour and material shortages to encourage apartment life on limited proximate urban land? How can we once again capture the fervour of good design that permeated daily life and culture? Could high-density mixed tenure demonstration projects, apartment design prototypes and frequent open house events draw similar crowds to the 1950s home fairs, and promote inclusivity? We have a rare moment now where Commonwealth and NSW housing politics have come into closer alignment. Let’s leverage this opportunity for a new design revolution that can facilitate a future of better spatial and social equality. There’s enough space for all, we just need to use it better. ■ _____ Alicia Pozniak is an architect and principal policy officer specialising in housing at the NSW Department of Planning. Her interests lie in understanding the cultural and political conditions that shape housing, urban development, government policy and its impact on place. Notes 1

https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/policy-and-legislation/housing/ apartment-design-guide

https://www.citiesforplay.com/

Walter Ralston Bunning CMG (19 May 1912 – 13 October 1977) was appointed executive officer of the Commonwealth Housing Commission and wrote much of its influential 1944 report.

Above: The Rochford, Erskineville. Studio Johnson. Photo: Brett Boardman Top: Lumina Apartments, Penrith. DKO. Photo: Ben Guthrie

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History rarely repeats, but it can rhyme Words: Ben Guthrie

Imagine for a moment that a local council could directly design and construct housing for the economically disadvantaged among us, using in-house architects. Then imagine that the resultant dwellings consist entirely of social housing and that this ‘development’ is not even remotely connected to or funded by adjacent new dwellings for the better off. Now imagine that such a building could make a measured, positive contribution to the streetscape. Provide it with scope for lush, considered vegetation and well-controlled privacy at the street threshold via a slightly elevated ground floor. Combine this with defined and differentiated moments of entry. Now maintain a dominant street edge that provides appropriate scale to the public domain along an entire city block. Provide every room (inclusive of bathrooms and kitchens) with access to natural light and air and every apartment with a balcony. Provide a good mix of apartment sizes and bedroom quantities while still maintaining a degree of economic repetition of planning throughout. Populate the communal rooftop with laundries and drying spaces. Add in a few shops at ground level on the shorter primary streets and corners for activation and passive surveillance. You now have the makings of an enduring element of public housing. About a hundred and ten years ago this was all possible.

The result of this civic imagining is entirely real and remains wholly intact, still functioning as affordable housing today. The diminutive scale of some of the rooms here may no longer meet all of our contemporary needs. Nor are the internal light-wells any longer considered an ideal solution to planning such building types. Physical neglect by a revolving door of successive governments with less-than-social agendas has knocked the place around from time to time, but these buildings still stand firm. The lessons here for us today remain clear: design well, build well, satisfy basic needs well and government funds can become an investment in housing for those in need for centuries. With a bit of luck and some social good will, we may yet be able to realise these sorts of enduring dreams of socially-responsible, urban-defining built form again. What follows is a short photo-essay on the persisting contribution of this architectural project to the character of the public domain. ■ _____ Ben Guthrie is a wanderer of city streets. He roams with camera and tripod, capturing built environments. He has formal qualifications in architecture and in fine arts. He is current VicePresident of Image Makers Association Australia.

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Strickland Buildings, Chippendale. Photo: Ben Guthrie

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Strickland Buildings, Chippendale. Photos: Ben Guthrie

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Strickland Buildings, Chippendale. Photo: Ben Guthrie

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The impact of housing on street character and urban liveability Words: Koos de KeIJZER and Gemma MacDonald

Our cities have been witnessing a gradual shift, a transformation embracing more diverse typologies and design solutions with a welcome focus on residents’ quality of life, community engagement and social inclusion. This wave of change is making our inner-city suburbs more interesting, infusing them with a vibrancy. This is also changing the middle ring and greenfield suburbs; however, the missing middle has been challenging to deliver and remains largely absent in our large urban centres. Planners in Australia have driven the concept of active edges as buildings touch the ground wherever they may be. One unfortunate by-product of low Australian residential densities is that active edges have become retail edges because retail is considered active, but is it? A quick look at Melbourne’s Docklands precinct shows at least 1.8 lineal kilometres of empty retail, providing no activation on the street. With Australia’s rapidly changing consumer landscape, retail as the active edge is becoming challenged. Australian suburbs’ physical, architectural, and social fabric has been undergoing a fascinating metamorphosis. The reuse of stoops has breathed new life into otherwise mundane neighbourhoods, taking cues from the architectural technique of the stoop, widely used in North America and Europe. Stoop, a small porch, comes from Dutch stoep and was fundamental in the early construction of New York City. The stoop technique has been used significantly, for instance, in Paddington, East Melbourne, and Surry Hills. Stoops serve as a transitional space between the public street and the private interior of a building. This can

create a sense of privacy and security, Jane Jacob’s “eyes on the street” while maintaining a connection to the street. Our projects, Arkadia and Eve in inner-city Sydney, with their contemporary interpretation of the stoop, have been instrumental in activating groundlevel spaces in those areas. They have turned otherwise defunct sites into hubs of activity. Stoops promote social interaction between neighbours and passersby. People often sit on their stoops, allowing for impromptu conversations, neighbourly interactions, and a sense of community, creating passive surveillance where a community thrives. Focusing on communal sun-soaked spaces to the north, Arkadia encourages a connection to the local community through extensive gathering spaces and small-scale entrances. Landscaped through-links and an integrated public pocket park seek to give something back to the wider community. These spaces encourage chance meetings across the site while maintaining key pedestrian links to Sydney Park and beyond. The idea of the street as a social space is exemplified by the Dutch Woonerf, roughly translated as “living streets,” functions without traffic lights, stop signs, lane dividers or even sidewalks. The whole point is to encourage human interaction; those who use the space are forced to be aware of others around them, make eye contact and engage in person-to-person interactions, a tactical more holistic urbanism. A preference for city living has led to a rise in compact and efficient housing designs, particularly in major cities. Compact apartments, townhouses, and smaller single-family homes are popular due to limited space and high property costs. High-rise solutions to city living have arguably contributed to a reduction of ground level culture, stoops replaced by empty commercial space. The humble terrace is the typology that adds the most diversity and activation to our streets and communities. Their charm is their close connection to the street, with minimal setbacks that maximise their impact on street character and visual reference. To mimic this, front setback variance can modulate the built form to add to the streetscape. Our Lumina project in Penrith, NSW has a deliberate modulation of its architectural structure, front setbacks are strategically diverse

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Arkadia. DKO and Breathe. Photo: Tom Ross

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/ The impact of housing on street character and urban liveability

words: Koos de KeIJzer and Gemma MacDonald

throughout the building’s length. This effectively divides the building into several visually distinct components, each characterised by unique architectural features. The outcome is a vibrant and dynamic streetscape that gives the impression of numerous individual smaller structures, rather than a single, unvarying monolithic form. Australian suburban areas tend to have more spacious streets and a layout that allows for larger lots and more spread-out housing. Due to limited space, European houses often have compact gardens or courtyards. The denser approach prioritises street-level activation while maintaining the residential generosity of areas. The diversity here isn’t limited to mere aesthetics; it encompasses a socio-economic spectrum, reflecting the multigenerational dynamics of changing families and shifting priorities driven by housing affordability.

Arkadia. DKO and Breathe. Photo: Tom Ross

Increasingly, households accommodate multiple generations under one roof, necessitating flexible housing designs. Designs that allow for separate living spaces or granny flats are in demand to facilitate multigenerational living as the population ages, with limited options for senior living or aged affordable care accommodation. Designs must cater to the needs of different household sizes and compositions by providing a mix of one, two and three-bedroom apartments, making it more inclusive and accessible to a diverse range of tenants. Increasingly, development is tenure blind – a principle that minimises the stigma attached to subsidised housing, reduces the likelihood of local problems connected to tenure and increases the probability of a socially cohesive community.

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As small backyards or dwellings without backyards become more common, parks and public green spaces become critical in providing places for people of all ages to be active. Walkable, connected and attractive neighbourhoods create great cities. Large-scale masterplans now prioritise linkages at the ground level, weaving a fine-grain tapestry that contributes to a sense of diversity and interest. It’s not just about increasing density; it’s about creating engaging, permeable spaces providing accessibility and amenity that enrich the lives of residents and create a sense of place and its identity. The ongoing transformation of Australian cities and suburbs seeks to create more inclusive, engaging, and vibrant communities that cater to their residents’ diverse needs and preferences. This shift reflects a commitment to enhancing the quality of life and social wellbeing for all members of these evolving urban landscapes. ■

_____ Koos de Keijzer, DKO principal, leads a 250+ strong team across Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, excelling in urban design, architecture, interiors, and landscape architecture. His dedication to sustainable communities is evident in his impactful projects and consultative role with various city councils. He studied at Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands. Gemma MacDonald studied anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London and has a wealth of experience in design management in the UK and Australia. She is currently the studio manager for DKO in Sydney.

Left: Woonerf in Amsterdam. Photo: Thami Croeser Below: Lumina, Penrith. DKO. Photo: Ben Guthrie

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(Don’t) do It yourself Words: Neil Mackenzie, Heidi Pronk and Richard Healey-Finlay

We have undertaken collaborative housing projects in architectural, legal and financial partnerships to house ourselves and our business. Collaborative projects rely on goodwill, common goals and a harmonious group dynamic over a long timeframe. Each of these three collaborative housing projects has at least tripled the residential density of their sites. The bureaucratic and personal challenges of these projects often seemed insurmountable. At these moments we thought, let’s just rip the roof off the warehouse and drag four old caravans in there.

newtown VAN city Four caravans and one commercial space. 185 dwellings/hectare.

Our experience on these journeys has been about navigating roadblocks; laying siege to them and holding on tight, clutching our best drawings as our only weapons. Over time our methods may be improving with strategies to remove emotion, get the right partners, right consultants and builders. Collaborations are ultimately about managing relationships. Everyone gets to hold the talking stick and to scribble over the plans, and we found often the party with the least amount of money tends to set the construction budget. Ultimately each of these projects created sustainable, joyous domestic spaces, increased density, contributed positively to their communities and retained unlikely built heritage assets while providing affordable first homes built next door to friends.

Newtown Van City – 185 dwellings/hectare. Illustration: Neil Mackenzie

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EGAN STREET WAREHOUSE Egan Street Newtown. Three apartments, one commercial space, 139 dwellings/hectare. Architects: Julie Mackenzie, Neil Mackenzie, Heidi Pronk, Jason Veale and Kieran McInerney

We had been captivated by a co-housing project undertaken by our peers in Church Street Newtown. By the time we had found a building the cost of old warehouses in the inner west had spiked. As with all the buildings we couldn’t afford prior, we hit the ground running, each of us with multiple schemes already badly drawn and ready to develop. We designed the apartments as a collective, pooling our skills and resources to get our first homes. The layout and details were agreed to be identical, and the model adopted was to share all costs with the ultimate value determined by valuations at the conclusion of construction.

Egan Street Ground floor plan redrawn by KMA

We arrived at three two-storey, two-bedroom apartments, with a separate commercial shopfront. The layout retained a generosity of space and maximised the usable area while appearing a natural evolution of the existing building. Each apartment is accessed via a common corridor to the south. On the ground floor a kitchen, dining and living room are arranged around a north-facing courtyard. Courtyard walls are large folding steel doors and a two-storey north-facing glazed wall. Each of the parties sold within five years – the apartments producing five or six offspring and three sets of first home buyers able to sell a unique strata apartment and afford larger residences a few stops further west. The commercial space to the street frontage was used as an architectural office until its recent conversion into an apartment by one of the original members of the group.

Egan Street first floor. Photo: Oliver Berlin

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/ (Don’t) do it yourself

EDITH STREET

words: neil mackenzie, Heidi Pronk and Richard Healey- Finlay

Four apartments and one car space. 130 dwellings/ hectare. Architect: Richard Healey-Finlay

The Edith Street project followed its predecessors with partnership agreements, joint loans and a list of things to do better. The project aimed for four owner-occupied apartments and as the design process unfolded a different model to apportion costs was conceived. This highlighted the differences between the various partners stages in life, their budget and idea of how big a house needs to be. The design evolved to settle on varying sizes that worked with the existing features of the original building. A three-year design process probably needed a counsellor to assist group dynamics. Changing briefs and design options called for a financial model where the build costs were split into common and individual costs. Once it was agreed which bucket each building element belonged in, a flexible outcome was achieved with the potential for each party to add or remove scope without financially affecting the other parties. N

Edith Street second floor plan

First Floor Plan 45 Edith Street St Peters NSW 0

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Not all the partners were in the design and construction industries and as the design process unfolded, babies were born, partners moved cities, small rifts developed, nonarchitects learned rudimentary Sketchup to inform or disrupt design development. The project took a full decade to realise while a small artists colony almost covered the mortgages. Seventeen years after buying the warehouse and seven after moving in, three of the original parties are still in ownership, with two still living in the building. An obvious lesson coming from the Edith Street project is in such an enterprise ideally all parties must bring a skillset to the project, here a lack of architects as contributors may have elongated the process. The building has been subsequently heritage-listed by Inner West Council.

Edith Street, St Peters, 130 dwellings/hectare. Photo: Richard Healey-Finlay

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ILLAWARRA ROAD A four-bedroom house with car space, one office space with separate apartment over and one car space. Subdivision, 81 dwellings/hectare. Architect: Mackenzie Pronk Architects

For this project we teamed up with a designer from our studio and her builder/craftsman partner. A dilapidated single residence and shop has become a contemporary commercial space with housing above the shop and a three-bedroom residence beside. A subsequent subdivision application was approved thereby creating a new lot. The relatively new B1 zoning of corner shops in this area allowed a mix of residential and commercial uses and required proof of existing use rights for residential to remain on ground (otherwise prohibited in this B1 zone). The project also sought to incorporate more recycled elements, energy efficient systems and ecologically sensitive design principles including PV panels, Iow-carbon concrete, accoya timber cladding, recycled bricks and recycled timber flooring and cladding. Again, shared resources brought a young family into property ownership, a rundown shop/ residence has become three separate things, one land parcel is now two. HOW TO DO IT The three projects have allowed twelve first home buyers into the market at a genuinely affordable rate. The satisfaction of doing it yourself is appealing, however the pathway can be unnerving, requiring a leap of faith that a range of bureaucracies may not understand from council planners, contaminated land experts, consultants and lending institutions.

Go straight to the most risk-tolerant lending institution and create personal connections. Grab good people with compatible skills and roughly equal finances. The challenges will arise from the model, the novelty and the risks of the sites chosen, the vagaries of our planning system, the myopia of lending institutions and the desire from all parties involved for complete fairness when sharing the workload of documenting, editing a spreadsheet, or cleaning bricks. These projects are all in buildings in established urban areas whose uses have transformed over time – old workshop, factories and corner stores. The retention of the buildings was part of an approach to build housing affordably and sustainably. Adaptive reuse, sustainable design and retention of heritage significance in preference to demolition. In these collaborative projects, be sure of the partnership and financial model and each parties’ strengths and weaknesses, then nurture your connections with each other and enjoy the journey. We are quietly working on the next one. Don’t do it by yourself, build it with your friends. ■ _____ Richard Healey-Finlay, Heidi Pronk and Neil Mackenzie have worked together in various ways for over twenty-five years currently all at Mackenzie Pronk Architects, occasionally working hard and talking about things outside architecture. Richard prefers to be in a tent in deep wilderness. Neil prefers to be paddling something in the ocean and Heidi prefers to be trail running with her dog. The Egan Street project won three Australian Institute of Architects awards in 2006.

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Transforming social housing: A holistic approach to housing the chronically mentally ill Words: Penny Collins

In the realm of architecture, few endeavours are as impactful and transformative as those addressing the critical issue of social housing. With homelessness among the chronically mentally ill escalating and generating staggering costs of up to $100,000 per person annually in healthcare and public services, architects and housing providers face an urgent call to action. Refuges such as Sydney’s Matthew Talbot Hostel provide short-term crisis accommodation and services, but the real need is for secure, long-term housing with support services. Professor Olav Nielssen, a psychiatrist with extensive experience in the problems facing the homeless mentally ill in Sydney, and a founding member of Community Housing provider Habilis, has incorporated the lessons learned elsewhere to develop a model of care for people who have become homeless because of severe mental illness. The core principle is that secure housing is itself a form of treatment for psychological distress, and in turn allows people who need indefinite treatment and support to access that care. The physical elements are small clusters of sole occupancy units with a secure perimeter to protect occupants from exploitation, a caretaker, day staff to supervise medication adherence, to prompt residents to participate in rehabilitation programs and community activities, and a clinic area to bring health services to the centre. The inaugural venture of Habilis represents a compelling case study in adaptive reuse – a former furniture factory in Sydney’s Summer Hill is now being transformed. This ambitious project encompasses twenty accommodation units, a caretaker’s unit, a clinic, and landscaped spaces.

The Habilis team found the site on Parramatta Road in Summer Hill, which, with an area of just over 1000 square meters and a maximum floor space ratio of 1:1, the site could yield sufficient gross floor area. A site visit revealed an unexpected oasis from the highway next to Hawthorne Canal and Greenway, providing residents with a pleasant, northerly aspect surrounded by trees.The project encountered many challenges stemming from the site’s tangled history. The first was the discovery of contamination from its past use as a dry-cleaning and car repair business, that demanded extensive remediation efforts. Moreover, the threat of flooding from the neighbouring lane added another layer of complexity to the project’s regulatory considerations. The high cost of land, and the steep increase in the cost of construction during COVID have increased the project’s cost and it would not be financially viable without donations and grants. Housing Australia is meant to provide low-cost finance, but their rates are tied to government cost of borrowing, and they are a conservative lender. The project’s financial viability depends to some extent on the Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) funding from the NDIA. Informed by design principles from the Liveable Housing Guidelines, encompassing accessibility, spatial dimensions, and amenity requirements, ranging from storage and luminance contrast to heating and cooling. The planning of the units and the landscaping offers a sanctuary for mentally ill residents who seek equilibrium through solitude. Deliberately designed to minimise chance encounters, interaction, and the feeling of being observed, it deviates from the conventional approach to housing. The site also follows Professor Nielssens’s response to the question, “What do these people like?” “well, they pretty much like the same things that you and I like”… with the proviso that: “they have to have a balcony to smoke on.”

Architecturally, Collins and Turner carefully considered the site’s existing materials, drawing inspiration from the render and green corrugated iron of the existing structures. Salvaged and reused corrugated iron was integrated, offering a layered approach that both unifies the structures and unveils the site’s past. Corrugated iron also performs well in privacy baffles between units, subtly perforated to reduce both physical and visual weight. Once a lifeless concrete slab, the courtyard transforms in collaboration with Gallagher Studio, introducing deep soil landscaping, retreat spaces, and lush plantings to ensure privacy. A rigorous approach to facade detailing further underscores the project’s commitment to harmonising with the existing fabric, exemplifying Eva Jiricna’s dictum of “civilizing the material.” While the design remains subservient to the original architecture, it elevates simple, low-cost materials to new and unexpected heights.

The main building envelope is dictated by the existing large-span concrete structure. Within the units, the design adapted to the spacious 4.6-metre-high factory ceilings, creating doubleheight apartments. These units adhere to the existing 3.7-metre-wide structural grid, spanning full depth to facilitate cross ventilation. On the first floor, mezzanine bedrooms, accessed via grand AS1428-compliant stairways, offer generous dimensions for their single occupants, including 3.1 x 3.1 metres of space alongside ample wardrobe capacity. With completion slated for January 2024, the project enters its final stages of construction. It exemplifies the transformative power of architecture, demonstrating that innovative, community-focused solutions have the potential to address even the most complex societal challenges. ■ _____ Penny Collins is design director at Collins and Turner. with over 25 years of experience across Europe and Australia. She leads the creation of award-winning public, commercial, and multi-residential projects.

architect collins and turner pty ltd Suite Six, 11 17 Buckingham Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 australia telephone +612 9356 3217 info@collinsandturner.com collinsandturner.com registered architect in nsw penelope collins arb 7342 01 02 03 04

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do not scale; dimensions govern all dimensions are in millimeters all dimensions to be veri collins and turner are to be noti any discrepancies

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Alternative housing ideas Words: Andrew Scott and Anita Panov

In early 2019 the City of Sydney instigated a competition process that was open to all, free to enter, without a single winner, required only a cleverly pithy set of deliverables and was to be adjudicated by a diverse collection of industry leaders in fields ranging from strategic design, policy, architecture, town planning and social services.

Tiny homes, micro apartments, communes, suburban granny flats, motels, unkempt share houses, dual key apartments, spare rooms, high-rise student housing, van life, small home transformations, sprawling multi-generational houses, clandestine industrial estate digs, caravan parks. Our architecture practice has always been interested in housing and more so in the idiosyncratic outliers of housing. At the outset, it seemed particularly accessible and fertile ground for an emerging practice. Our hunch was that innovation resides most happily in the alternative. Over time, as the normative house has become both unsuitable and unaffordable due to evolving household types and the speculative increase in land prices, dwelling size and construction costs, our engagement in the alternative has become more and more compelling. This interest led us to engage with the recent(ish) Alternate Housing Ideas Challenge (AHIC). The following is a brief reflection on that remarkable program.

AHIC sought housing models that demonstrate innovation in planning, design, tenure, management, construction, land supply and financing. The proposals were to be demonstrably affordable, imbue economic, social and environmental sustainability, to result in spaces of high amenity, enhance community and to be scalable, replicable and self-sustaining. Our practice Panov–Scott, collaborated with Alexander Symes Architect. Both busy with young families and burgeoning practices, the collaboration was loose and efficient, based on a shared interest in social engagement, building technology and narrative. Alex generously took the lead in feasibility and environmental considerations, we more so in spatial arrangement and curation. The first stage of AHIC resulted in over 230 international submissions, of these the jury selected seven finalists that would receive funding and development support. The selected finalists, summarised below, demonstrated a neat diversity of approaches. Our idea, PIXEL, investigates how minimum dwelling spatial arrangements might aggregate to enable greater affordability and more generous communal live-work spaces. Then how that shared space of ambiguous use might begin to engender more nuanced thresholds between communal, public and private spaces.

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PIXEL Pilot configuration utilising development efficiency to establish double storey communal space with natural light and air in deep floorplates

Rightsize Service enables existing homeowners to reconfigure their dwelling to match their evolving needs, with excess accommodation transformed into additional dwelling spaces. Smart Home Sydney utilises remote sensing within housing to collect lifestyle and medical data, while Pop Up Shelter, seeks to establish shortterm crisis accommodation in empty buildings. Both The Third Way and Equity Housing Model, utilise leased public land, the former to establish a co-operative with shared equity ownership and secure, affordable rental housing, and the latter a mix of affordable and social fixed-cost life-lease housing. Foundations of Equity is a community land trust policy for managing land ownership separate to housing tenure, as an alternate to land divestment, to enable greater affordability and community-led development.

The City of Sydney hosted development workshops for the teams through the second half of 2019. These were fascinating for the breadth of expertise on offer, enabling the propositions to be honed with input from the City of Sydney, planning and Government Architect teams, representatives of the City Futures Research Centre, the Greater Sydney Commission, Kerstin Thompson Architect, Shelter NSW, the Property Council of Australia, the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals, and Common Equity NSW. The ideas were presented in progress as part of the Sydney Architecture Festival Making. Housing. Affordable. in late 2019 and momentum was building nicely towards the Alternate Housing Exhibition due to be held in mid-2020.

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/ Alternative housing ideas

words: Andrew Scott and Anita Panov

PIXEL Pilot plan in a single storey 1000sqm typical residential flat building floorplate with 93% development yield efficiency

Over the course of the workshops, it became evident that a number of the ideas could be complimentarily combined to establish a demonstration development, a co-living/working (PIXEL) co-operative shared equity rental (Third Way) on city land leased to a community land trust (Foundations of Equity).

A great new period in the delivery of public housing by local authorities looked possible. Then came COVID-19. By March 2020 the city was in lockdown and with the profound impacts of that time, focus and budgets shifted away from the development, the exhibition did not eventuate.

Considerable work was undertaken by these teams for the development of a carpark site in Cope Street, Redfern. Council was energised by the example of Paul Karakusevic, a key practitioner of the current UK public housing revolution, who delivered the Sydney Architecture Festival keynote.

AHIC is listed in Housing for All, the current City of Sydney local housing strategy. Increasing diversity and choice in housing, it seeks schemes enabled by the Alternative Housing Ideas Challenge and Affordable and Diverse Housing Fund.

Interior view of a single storey PIXEL dwelling

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Business As Usual single storey 1000sqm typical Apartment Design Guide residential flat building floorplate with 84% development yield efficiency

While AHIC ended with more fizzle than hoped, it remains a remarkable initiative on the part of a public authority. In an age of simplistic reactionary responses to the housing crisis it refreshingly sought nuanced and considered alternates based on real world multidisciplinary knowledge. The competition format was innovative also, eschewing the winner takes all model for a more patient and inclusive process. For our part we will continue to leverage our commissioned projects, always looking for the opportunity to make schemes informed by alternative housing ideas. ■ _____ Andrew Scott and Anita Panov are directors of Panov–Scott Architects. They lead the design ambition of the practice with a particular interest in the making of great places via finely crafted constructions. This ambition is deployed across a deliberately diverse range of project types, scales and budgets to ensure social engagement and fulfil their curiosity.

Axonometric view of a double storey PIXEL dwelling

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Bigge Street, Liverpool. Photo: Brett Boardman

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Social housing: In brief Words: Stephen Cox and Dan Szwaj

Social housing project briefs include many requirements, including apartment mix to suit the anticipated residents, accessibility standards to accommodate a wide demographic, and operational consideration to ensure a manageable and long-last building. While these are necessary and important, an overarching design principle that is sometimes omitted from the brief is blind tenure. Blind tenure is the notion that social housing is indistinguishable from private housing projects. This is not that social housing is identical to private housing, as social housing has particular requirements such as those listed above. Successful blind tenure demonstrates that social projects can achieve the same amenity and contribution to the city as private apartments. Reflecting on three social projects completed by Turner, we see blind tenure as an intuition that has directed our design thinking and project outcomes. Viewed from the street, within the lobby, and among common spaces, social housing shouldn’t be distinctively social. When someone visits, we hope it never occurs to them that it is social housing, but rather, a lovely, considered, and liveable home. The projects, two social and one affordable, have questioned the perception that social housing is second-rate and have been recognised as exemplar housing projects. They demonstrate innovation in design, materials, and common spaces, and exemplify blind tenure. Like private projects, social housing must understand the context, be unique to place, and draw on the characteristics of the neighbourhood including scale and streetscape. In practice, many social projects have been

concentrated in estates which no longer achieve repeatable urban design outcomes. In response, an integrated model is being trialled where social housing is collocated with private housing. The Washington Park project in Riverwood exemplifies this approach. Among the 825 apartments in the precinct, 150 are social housing units organised in either separate buildings or lift cores.1 All apartments share common civic spaces including a library and community centre. In contrast to the remaining estate, the street edge buildings connect key civic spaces and create a legible streetscape hierarchy. Many social housing projects are unhelpfully distinctive from the street. As long-term assets managed by Government and community housing providers, robust materials and design for longevity are key concerns which can jar with other buildings if not appropriately considered. Design thinking is required to achieve blind tenure. Part of the strategy for the Blackwattle Apartments in Glebe was to intentionally use a small palette of highly robust materials to create a facade with a high level of visual interest and articulation. The project is distinctive, but not as social housing. Being so responsive to context, the building knits the city fabric together rather than creating a hole. The Bigge Street project adopts a similar approach. Precast concrete was agreed with the builder from the start. This allowed sufficient design time to maximise efficiency and value but also to explore the expressive potential – how the facade might express depth, texture, and patina. The project embraced uneven spending, concentrating detail where it could be readily seen and simplifying expression elsewhere.

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/ Social housing: In brief words: Stephen Cox and Dan Szwaj

On the street elevation, striated concrete spandrels create texture. Adjacent to the entry, the address is writ large in concrete offering a little play on words. Colour is used strategically to highlight entry, contrast with the concrete, and with future maintenance in mind. The entry is an important social area of the building and generally the first internal spaces experienced in the project. Part of our learnings through our projects is to locate mailboxes within the secure part of the building to minimise junk and opportunistic mail theft. It helps the area stay tidy, safe, is easier to manage and can including seating, landscape, and other elements to foster social interaction between residents. Another learning is the careful location of the waste room, which tends to be nearby the main entry for convenience and simple management.

Washington Park plan showing buildings, civic spaces, and parklands

In the past, many social housing projects have adopted quite plain interiors in deference to maintenance concerns. In the Blackwattle Apartments project in Glebe, the interiors are designed to be minimalistic but easy to look after. Fans and external thermal control allow air-conditioning to be eliminated. Well located, built in and generous storage makes it easier for residents to keep things organised. Floors are tiled for longevity except carpet in bedrooms. Social housing is life-changing for residents. The stability of a permanent home is a significant factor in the ability of residents to access employment, health care, and reduce personal stress. In our interactions with residents of our projects we have been touched by the success stories and changes to the lives of many. These interactions greatly encourage us in the design and creation of future social housing projects and help us to seek further refinements and improvements. ■

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Blackwattle Apartments. Photo: Brett Boardman

_____ Stephen Cox and Dan Szwaj are directors at Turner and have worked together since 1998. While their work encompasses many typologies, a significant proportion is related to residential and mixed-use projects. They embrace the vision that design is for everyone, understanding that design is both a collaborative process and for the benefit of residents, visitors, and the broader community.

Note 1

Washington Park was originally designed to achieve a 70/30% private/social housing split. The introduction of an adjacent site allowed development uplift which diluted the proportion of social housing to around 20%. In future projects, the Government is advocating a 50/20/30% split (private/affordable/social) to better assist the creation of additional social housing. Blackwattle apartments in Glebe is an example of this new thinking as the precinct includes social, affordable, and private apartments.

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The search for the sustainable home Words: Tone Wheeler

The environmentally responsible home morphed over the last 80 years, from passive solar to alternatives to Passivhaus to inner-urban apartments. The changing focus, and names, is the story of sustainability itself. Australian architects responding to the horrors of WWII sought to design a better society. By adopting the ideals of modernism for suburban housing, relating design to the landscape and climate as expressed in Walter Bunning’s Homes in the Sun (1945), where climate response created courtyard designs oriented for both sunlight and privacy. In the 1950s the Experimental Building Station continued these ideas with instructional booklets: Designing Houses for Australian Climates (JW Drysdale, 1952) and Sunlight and Shade in Australasia (RO Phillips, 1954). By “moral encouragement” they hoped for better design, assuming that people would adopt passive solar homes if they had access to good, scientific ideas, but the impact on home design was limited. Mass production of standardised detached houses for the rapidly expanding population had little regard for energy costs or environmental impact. Increased environmental awareness in the 1960s drove designs using alternative technology. A revival of vernacular forms, exploratory domes and autonomous houses were intended to address issues of ecology and energy. Mainstream housing was untroubled by a few remote hippy houses on the fringe, no matter how audacious.

The 1973 oil shock focused minds on broadscale energy efficiency. Research concentrated on water heating and thermal comfort, advocating bulk insulation, double glazing and internal thermal mass in floors and walls, drawn from European or US solutions targeting heating, ignoring the need for cooling the hot Australian climates. Books on highly efficient individual passive solar homes proliferated; ignored by business as usual. In the 1980s efficient design became ecologically sustainable development (ESD), despite few designers having any working knowledge of ecology. The water cycle issues of collection, storage, use and recycling became prominent. A building’s long-term impact was now measured in life cycle assessment (LCA), adding materials embedded energy content and environmental concerns to operational energy. By the 1990s the first wave of “moral encouragement” showed little impact, so governments started a second wave of regulation, legislating for responsible design. Codes started slowly, introducing minimum thermal performance standards through NatHERS in 1993. This highlighted the need to ignore overseas solutions and address local radiant and convective conditions that require both coolth and warmth: external insulation or outsulation, shading and ceiling thermal mass for passive diurnal cooling. In 2003 specific energy efficiency standards were regulated in the Building Code of Australia and in 2004 BASIX focused on energy, water

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Illustration: Tone Wheeler

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/ The search for the sustainable home

words: Tone Wheeler

and thermal comfort issues, better for detached houses than apartments at first, but gradually improved. Rainwater tanks, stormwater issues and on-site detention (OSD), were all addressed, but coal and wood fires were not banned. Gradually the everyday project house improved. Digital modelling improved increasingly through the 2000s, with calculations promoting internal environmental quality (IEQ), measuring the effectiveness of the building’s envelope for interior spatial performance: thermal efficiency, natural and artificial lighting, natural and mechanical ventilation. All key issues in energy efficiency. If regulation eliminates worst practice, the German idea of Passivhaus promotes best. A home is super-sealed, with highly controlled fresh air, so that very little heating or cooling is needed. Extreme energy efficiency for thermal comfort. Its origins in subzero Europe have made its application in Australia controversial, many arguing the original passive design for coolth and warmth is more applicable in Australian temperate climates, with occupants used to opening and closing windows. Since the early 2000s, widely available, affordable and super-efficient and photovoltaic panels (PVs) allow homes or apartments to generate electricity to offset usage. The panels can be on-site or remote, and their contribution can make the home carbon neutral or make more energy than used and be carbon positive.

Until 2000, the environmental performance of a home was determined solely on the building itself, but an increasingly holistic understanding of sustainability broadened concerns to the embodied and operational impacts of transport and infrastructure, so the planning issues of dwelling density and location became important in determining the carbon footprint. By this measure townhouses and apartments, particularly well-positioned inner-urban ones, were more sustainable than detached houses or duplexes. The smaller internal areas meant better NatHERS scores, and the introduction of controls for apartments in SEPP 65 (the RFDC in 2002 and the ADG in 2015) promoted sun access and cross ventilation to improve individual apartment performance. The building’s distance from services, employment and public transport determines its transport energy demand. Infrastructure and resources such as electricity, water and sewage all have embodied and operational energy that should be shared efficiently. By 2010 the search was on for the Goldilocks density. Too low, and a suburban or remote highperforming passive or autonomous solar home will be overwhelmed by increased transport and infrastructure energy costs. Too high, and the energy demand for basement ventilation, lifts and especially air conditioning, cannot be offset by the reduced solar gain, despite its better location.

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The just-right typology is a modest, well-located apartment block, three to five storeys, 60 to 70% site coverage, high envelope standards with passive solar (or Passivhaus in noisy locations), and PVs to make it carbon neutral or better. It’s an up-dated version of the 1960s inner-urban, three-storey red-brick walk-up block of flats with corner apartments set in a garden. Not the ideal environmental home passive solar enthusiasts envisaged 80 years ago, but that’s the arc we have come. In the end there is no such thing as a fully sustainable home. The best solution we have now is a passive-based, well-designed cluster of homes, close to services. ■

Above: Environa Studio Apartments Baulkham Hills Top: Environa Studio Apartments, Mona Vale Photos: Tone Wheeler

_____ Tone Wheeler is an architect, academic and author who designs to the triple bottom line, with a focus on equity, sustainability and affordability in multi-dwelling and community projects. He has won the Australian Institute of Architects Milo Dunphy Sustainability Award, Leadership in Sustainability Prize and the Sustainability Awards Lifetime Achievement.

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The architecture of housing: Obligations and opportunities Words: Philip Thalis

Australia has long been categorised as one of the most urbanised nations, with a high percentage of the population living in suburbs and conurbations. In recent decades, a substantially greater proportion of people are now living in higher density housing. This is certainly the case in major cities like Sydney and Melbourne, where over 50% of all new dwellings have been in the form of apartment buildings. As denser forms of housing are now prevalent across Australia, the profession must rise to the challenge and must better demonstrate the role and character of such housing in city making. Philosopher Henri Lefebvre articulated an essential democratic agenda for urban culture. “The right to the city manifests itself as a superior form of rights: the right to freedom, the right of the individual to take part in society, the right to habitat and to inhabit. … to participation and appropriation (clearly distinct from the right of property), are implied in the right to the city.”1 In these terms, the intensification of urban housing matters to us all. To the existing city, it brings a new scale and street character, infusing places with more people and activity. For new inhabitants, it brings more compact urban living, with the benefits of proximity and the buzz of denser neighbourhoods. The design of this new generation of buildings will affect everyone. The city manifests itself as a continuum of social, economic, political and technological forces which shapes housing types, and in turn is shaped by that housing. Mass housing, be it the serial terrace houses of the 19th century, the idiomatic single house sprawl of the 20th century, or the looming apartment buildings

of the 21st century so far, can propel the evolving urbanity of our cities. With few exceptions housing constitutes the major proportion of any city’s urban footprint and building stock, and as such it carries a responsibility for architectural intelligence. The time spans of city making need to be understood; urban layouts persist sometimes for millennia, subdivisions over centuries, housing types for many decades as a minimum. People live in dwellings, sometimes for their whole life, that were never specifically designed to their needs or wants. They adapt to their selected urban habitat as much as they adapt the housing itself, as people’s housing choices are always an amalgam of price, size, location, lifestyle and time of life. The qualities of housing always have a direct correlation to the everyday life of residents. The attributes of good housing traverse civilisations and span eras. The architecture of housing has specific disciplinary knowledge, acquired through study of precedents and work on projects. Increasingly it is burdened by a myriad of prescriptive unintegrated regulations and codes. If housing can claim any specific theory it would centre on distinctions of generative models and generic types2, and more recently hybrids spawned by combinations of program, ownership structure and scale. Type is essentially defined by the residents’ daily trajectory from the private world of the apartment interior – through to the communal and circulation spaces, within the boundaries of its lot – to the relationship to public street and out to the wider city. Organisation and distribution are the key determinants of type, to be adapted and reinterpreted in response to each site’s specific situation and dimensions, determining its architectural proposition open to the city.

Right: Urbanising Suburbia – Matrix of a selection of Hill Thalis apartment buildings, showing diversity of urban situation, lot size, mixed uses, density, orientation and scale, with a categorisation by type. All plans and sections to same scale, north up in all cases.

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H ousin g for all

/ The architecture of housing: Obligations and opportunities

words: Philip Thalis

The challenge for the architecture of housing is to imbue inert quantities with vivid qualities. By design, these qualities must have visceral, physical, green dimensions – uplifting the experience of daily life. The need for amenity and environmental performance are fundamental and have long been understood, as Renaissance architect LB Alberti wrote in the 15th century: “it would be convenient to have glass windows, balconies, and porticos; apart from the attraction of the view, they may admit sun or breezes, depending on the season… The ancients preferred their porticos to face south (north in the southern hemisphere), because in summer the arc of the sun would be too high for its rays to enter, whereas in winter it would be low enough.” Such a timeless reminder on housing design. Due to their size and growing complexities today, most apartment buildings are designed by architects – indeed in New South Wales it is a requirement unique in Australia. This is the profession’s significant opportunity for city making, marking architects’ responsibility to society to realise good housing. Rather than conceiving of housing as a commodity like any other, the obligation for all involved in the design of housing must be to deliver as good a place to live as possible – a place with character and amenity, affording dignity, connected to landscape, made of durable construction, capable of personalisation. Now we must also add, minimising embodied energy and mitigating climatic change. Urban housing has often been associated with accelerated periods of urban transformation, propelled by economic and social forces. Unsurprisingly housing’s role in city making

is a barometer of each era’s many pressures and threats. Of today’s threats, Saskia Sassen sharply observed: “The spread of mega-projects with vast footprints that inevitably kill much urban tissue…density is not enough to have a city.”3 Pertinent to the media and real estate fertilisation of Australian architects’ up-market houses, David Madden & Peter Marcuse critiqued over-capitalised housing conceived for speculation; “Plenty of super-prime real estate should barely be considered housing at all… luxury housing is antisocial.”4 In contrast to bespoke houses, the economy of space and means has long been characteristic of mass housing. Unquestioning subjugation to economic determinants has never been good enough – clearly it is unconscionable now. Our opportunities must be underpinned by discriminating study of the substantial body of architectural knowledge and practice specific to urban housing, propagated by discussion and shared ideas, tested through projects, publication and exhibitions. As architects our pressing obligation is to contribute to an enriched culture of city making that uplifts daily life, prioritises environmental performance and the equitable availability of the architecture of housing. ■ _____ Philip Thalis is founding principal of Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects and holds a professor of practice in architecture at UNSW. Hill Thalis is recognised for its design and independent standpoint. The practice has designed more than 100 apartment buildings of varying types and scales.

Notes

Henri Lefebvre, La droit a la ville, Editions Anthropos, 1972. (English translation: Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996) pp173-4

See Quatremere de Quincy discussions of type

Saskia Sassen, “Who owns our cities – and why this urban takeover should concern us all” http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/24/who-owns-ourcities-and-why-this-urban-takeover-should-concern-us-all?CMP=share_btn_tw - accessed 07.01.16

David Madden & Peter Marcuse, In Defense of Housing; The Politics of Crisis Verso, London 2016 pp37-38

H ousin g for all

Small changes making a big difference – place based microzoning Words: Abbie Galvin

Australian capital cities are more sparsely populated than cities of similar size in other developed economies. Sydney is 48th in terms of size of its urban footprint, although ranks among the least densely populated cities in the world at 859.1 The message is, we’re not using our land well. It’s costing us. Our homes are expensive. Out of 94 major markets in eight nations Sydney’s housing is the second least affordable. We are now second to Hong Kong. Additionally, the more we sprawl the more it costs to support houses with public transport, schools, parks, streets, pipes and wires. Infrastructure Victoria and the NSW Productivity Commission both released reports this year stating it costs double to quadruple to sprawl rather than to fill in, leverage, share and improve what we already have. It’s also costing our climate. The University of California research assessed different intervention strategies and their ability to impact carbon emissions across 700 Californian cities.2 The study reviewed urban infill as a planning initiative among a range of other initiatives and found in many cities urban infill had the most significant impact on reduction of carbon emissions. We have a lot of houses to build In August 2023 National Cabinet, in addition to announcing a new national target to build 1.2 million well-located new homes over five years, also agreed to a National Planning Reform Blueprint which includes “promoting medium and high-density housing in well located areas close to existing public transport connections, amenities and employment.”

Binary provision of housing Despite fairly consistent criticisms of the complexity of the planning system, we have become very skilled at the provision (and protection) of detached homes. We have also become adept at delivering high density pockets of development, often tall buildings clustered around transit nodes and busy roads. The focus is generally on the amenity of transit, and no other amenity, such as great parks, high quality streets, and the ability to walk to local shops. We love to hate a tower, and many different heights of buildings are regularly called towers – to maximise the sense of outrage. However, they continue to be built, regardless of community objections. The vehemence of the objections tend to peter out after a time, they’re never really IMBY, they’re generally well up the road, we look at them when we go past, but don’t live alongside them. If delivery of high-density housing is doing ok on its own, what do we mean by medium-density and well-located housing? We have two middles and both are missing There is much discussion about medium-density housing – often referred to as the missing middle. But what is it exactly? Some consider it as semi-detached and terrace houses, the model of housing we see around much of our inner suburbs, built before the dominance of the car, with the need to stay compact and walkable, and minimise cost of infrastructure. Others expand it to include small apartment buildings, medium in height, these buildings can take on the form of a large house, or form courtyard or garden apartments, or create modest defining street walls. These small apartment buildings were also common in many of our inner ring suburbs, scattered between attached and detached homes, sometimes in more deliberate clusters. One of our middles is missing more than the other The data shows that numbers of both these middles – the low-rise middle (two-storey semis, dual occupation, terraces) and the mid-rise

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middle (three to six-storey apartment buildings), are on the decline, mid-rise at a much more rapid rate. Thirty years ago, low rise approvals were 20% of total housing approvals in NSW, and mid-rise were 6.2%. In June this year the equivalent figures were 17.2% and 1.25%.3 We’re not building the housing people want “It is a myth that all new first-home buyers want a quarter-acre block. Many would prefer a townhouse, semi-detached dwelling, or apartment in an inner or middle suburb, rather than a house on the city fringe” says Grattan Institute research.4 Our households are changing, the census shows over half (56.1%) of households in NSW contain one or two people. Single-person households are the fastest-growing household type, projected to increase from 2.3 million to between 3 and 3.5 million households in the next 20 years. Research undertaken for GANSW by UNSW City Futures Research Centre found mediumrise apartment buildings with fewer than 20 apartments were preferred by the majority of apartment purchasers.5 If people want it, why don’t we build it? In 2018, the Low Rise Housing Diversity Code (the Code) made a valiant attempt to force the low-rise middle into our suburbs through establishing a complying development pathway (ie meet certain development standards and no DA required) for terraces, semis and manor houses. There was fierce opposition from councils and communities. Not only was agency taken away from the local council and communities, but suburban character was seen to be on its way to the grave.

Analysis of development that has occurred under the Code shows its lack of success. Firstly, most local councils did not make these development types permissible in their R2 and R3 zones. Many also adjusted development standards so typologies that were permissible, were often not viable as they were being held to a higher standard than the Code. Secondly, the Standard Instrument LEP (local environment plan) which sets out the standard provisions for all LEPs to follow, also did not include the Code typologies as permissible in R2 and R3 zones. That means, an R2 zone (77% of all our residential zoned lots in metro Sydney) doesn’t permit terrace houses, semis or manor houses, and the R3 zones don’t permit manor houses. Thirdly, in many areas, the math just didn’t stack up. The land value/construction cost equation combined with restricted FSRs and GFAs in the Code limited its feasibility. Create a consistent baseline We need to reset with a consistent baseline – and be clear across NSW about what is permitted in low and medium density zones. We could even consider taking the word ‘density’ out, and just consider them as low-rise housing and mid-rise housing zones. R2 and R3 zones across the state should permit the same housing types and should have the same minimum development standards for these types. These development standards should focus on amenity of the site, the house and the neighbourhood, eg setbacks which consider respectful streetscapes, site coverage controls and relaxed carparking standards which ensure landscape, good tree canopy and frontages that aren’t dominated by cars, and heights which consider neighbours and privacy but support maximising area within the envelope.

H ousin g for all

/ SMALL CHANGES – PLACE BASED MICROZONING

words: Abbie Galvin

Pattern book of low and medium-rise housing typologies (from: Housing Initiatives Case Studies for GANSW, by Bennett &Trimble)

Build from the baseline and apply a surgical approach Once a clear and reasonable baseline is established, we need to look at how we can build from this, using a place-based, surgical approach, which we have called microzoning. GANSW have tested this approach – through developing multiple design-led case studies for LGAs across NSW in collaboration with McGregor Westlake and Redshift, Bennett &Trimble and Smith & Tzannes. Atlas Economics worked alongside us providing market and feasibility advice. The work developed a pattern book of low and mid-rise typologies to choose from, and selected those that achieved the best site outcomes in regard to local character, tree canopy and landscape outcomes They were also assessed and selected on feasibility (yield, cost to build, local construction preferences), then suitability was analysed for different locations in a suburb.

Key findings demonstrated mid-rise typologies are suited on lots that are close to the local shops, that have frontage to parks, or on block ends with maximum street frontage but minimum impact on the body of the street. Low-rise typologies are suited mid-block, on individual lots with good width and on streets with rear lanes. A base case (not illustrated) calculated dwelling yield if all lots were developed to maximum capacity using current DCP controls. The illustrated case studies then used the typologies developed and considered three scenarios. The case studies analysed increase in dwelling yield, percentage of lots impacted (impact on character), and diversity of housing provided. The findings of the case study illustrated above are consistent with the general findings across the case studies. The illustrated case study results are shown in the second table.

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Scenario

Description

Assumptions

A (Code)

Mandated application of the Code across a suburb, identified blocks that met minimum lot sizes and frontages, and calculated a dwelling yield assuming each one of those blocks was developed.

Ignored economic feasibility

B (Microzoning – small apartments only)

Proposed a place-based microzoning approach – to match yield of Scenario A. Focussed just on re-zoning selected lots (block ends, lots with park frontages, and those near local shops) for small apartment buildings.

Selected typologies with feasible yield

C (Microzoning – mix)

Proposed a place-based microzoning approach – to match yield of Scenario A. Included both small apartment buildings, semis and terraces. Low-rise was located on mid blocks with good lot width.

Selected typologies with feasible yield

Suburban case study – Three scenarios from: Housing Initiatives Case Studies for GANSW, by Bennett &Trimble

Scenario

Dwelling Impact on increase character

Housing diversity

Base case (not illustrated)

1% lots impacted

99% detached dwellings

71%

64% lots impacted

20% detached dwellings 80% low-rise dwellings

71%

16% lots impacted

48% detached dwellings 52% low- and mid-rise dwellings (apartments only)

71%

22% lots impacted

45% detached dwellings 55% low- and mid-rise dwellings (apartments, terraces, semis)

This place-based microzoning approach demonstrates it is possible to achieve considerable increases in housing, set high benchmarks for landscape and have minimal impact on existing character, if small injections of density are made in carefully targeted and appropriate locations. We don’t need to redevelop an entire suburb to open our doors to more and diverse homes. Our suburbs do need to change to sustainably increase our housing numbers to support an ever-increasing population. Microzoning shows how they can change but not transform. Small changes made in the right places can make a big difference. ■

_____ Abbie Galvin LFRAIA has leapt with passion and commitment into the space where some of the most formative decisions about our cities and suburbs are made – State Government. Using her skills and knowledge from 30 years in architectural practice, Abbie now advocates for and shapes our public places and spaces through her role as the Government Architect NSW. Notes 1

Demographia World Urban Areas 2022 Report

Jones et al, 2018

ABS Building Approvals

The Great Australian Nightmare, Grattan Institute 2022

NSW Apartment Purchaser Perceptions, UNSW City Futures Research Centre

Housing for all

Housing and policy Words: Lisa King

Lisa King Policy and advocacy manager, NSW Australian Institute of Architects

The State Government has seen a renewed focus on housing and policy to tackle the affordability crisis. The Australian Institute of Architects has actively engaged with government and key stakeholders to ensure the expertise and knowledge of our members is at the heart of housing policy discussions and new initiatives for housing reform, which are due to be released by the Minns Government prior to the end of 2023. The NSW Building Reforms, previously only capturing Class 2 construction, have now rolled out to both Classes 3 and 9c. The Institute continues to provide dedicated support to all practice sizes in navigating the reforms through one-on-one phone calls, practice visits, emails and online meetings. After much consultation to distribute the Declared Drawing Matrix, a tool created by the Institute and its expert members to navigate requirements under the DBP Act and Regulation, this tool will soon become part of government guidance in the Design Practitioner’s Handbook. We are currently working on further resources to assist members and the industry as a whole, to clarify processes and procedures facilitating more confident implementation of the legislation by practitioners. The Building Bill 2023 – Licensing Proposals: A review of building licensing and registration in NSW aims to better equip those on site with the knowledge, experience and supervision required to improve built outcomes for the community. We made a submission on this paper and await the upcoming additional draft legislation yet to come as part of the Building Bill’s replacement of the Home Building Act 1989 (NSW).

We have welcomed the new increase to BASIX standards to be implemented from 1 October 2023. A dedicated event was held so that our members could hear directly from Planning NSW and learn design strategies for achieving the new performance standards through case studies presented by ESD experts. Government recently sought our feedback on potential improvements that can be made to the Complying Development Certificate decisionmaking process in NSW to better support the delivery of new low-rise residential construction on already developed land. Other recent submissions include a response to the NSW Government’s initiative to develop a new arts, culture, and creative industries policy and the accompanying discussion paper, A New Look at Culture. We recently attended the NSW Livable Housing Stakeholder Forum and are keen for the NSW Government to stop talking about whether NSW commits to the NCC2022 Livable Housing standards and get on with how to make it happen. Numerous media releases, letters to ministers and responses to media enquiries have been provided on key policy and advocacy issues Some of these include the recent NSW Budget summary and the Housing Policy statement. Lisa King invited ministers to respond to some questions on housing.

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What is your ambition for the roles and responsibilities of government, not-for-profit community housing providers and the private market in the provision of social housing in NSW?

of Communities and Justice with the Land and Housing Corporation and the Aboriginal Housing Office to streamline support for residents and bring together skills and expertise under one roof. In addition, we are:

Rose Jackson Minister for Water, Housing, Homelessness, Mental Health, Youth and the North Coast

Given the significant shortfall of social housing in NSW and your well-articulated agenda of delivering a home for everyone who needs one, what practical changes will you be implementing to speed up the delivery of completed dwelling? As the NSW Minister for Housing and Homelessness, my expectation is that we will work across the board to address the housing crisis on every front. We have a shared responsibility to ensure everyone in the state has access to a safe and secure home and effective collaboration is crucial to this work. Everyone has a role to play in this and we have wasted no time in getting on with the job to deliver more homes. There is no silver bullet when it comes to addressing our housing crisis. Our focus is on reforms which will deliver a reliable supply of affordable housing in New South Wales, to support our most vulnerable, help people get into the housing market, and put downwards pressure on rent. A vital part of that work is the creation of Homes NSW which aims to put people at the heart of housing solutions and will drive that vision, delivering more and better social and affordable housing with our partners, cutting the waiting list and reducing homelessness. The NSW Government is merging the housing and homelessness functions of the Department

• Exploring all options to build on our commitment to deliver a minimum of 30 per cent social and affordable housing on government land. • Undertaking a statewide land audit to identify state owned land to deliver more housing. • Incentivising the delivery of more social and affordable housing by the Land and Housing Corporation, Aboriginal Housing Office and Landcom through planning reforms. • Fast tracking the delivery of more social and affordable homes through the $610 Million Federal Government’s Social Housing Accelerator payment and impending Housing Australia Future Fund. • The 2023-24 NSW Budget include a $224 million Essential Housing Package which includes $70 million to accelerate the delivery of social, affordable homes in reginal NSW. • Investigating innovative solutions to deliver more homes with $10 million allocated to Modular Housing Trial to deliver faster quality social housing. Providing more homes in places where people want to live and work, located near to the services people need, is crucial and remains a priority for the NSW Government.

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NSW has the potential of alienating our communities as a result of shortfalls in housing delivery and housing choice, there is a concern people will choose to move and live somewhere easier. What specific policies will you be implementing to help combat housing shortage in established suburbs? Paul Scully Minister for Planning and Public Spaces

The National Housing Accord targets mean that NSW is required to deliver 377,000 new homes by mid-2029. We all know, this is a huge job, and we need to think creatively about how we can use the planning levers already available to deliver more housing close to transport and jobs. We cannot endlessly continue Sydney’s urban sprawl – we must go up, which means greater density in established suburbs.

The NSW Government announced in June a new policy to incentivise the delivery of affordable housing within private developments, to both boost housing supply and increase the amount of affordable housing in all communities. This policy means that residential developments with a capital investment value (CIV) over $75 million which allocate 15% of FSR to affordable housing, will gain access to a State Significant Development (SSD) pathway, as well as access to a 30% FSR bonus and a 30% height bonus.

Terraces and one to two-storey unit blocks are permitted in R2 zoning in only two of 32 Local Environment Plans (LEPs) – that’s just 6% across Sydney, despite 77% of land being zoned R2. Deliberate decisions like this over many years, have meant that the housing types which built Sydney’s housing past are being prevented from playing a role in Sydney’s housing future.

The Government has introduced other changes in relation to Government agencies as well, which give a clear indication of where our priorities lie. We’ve increased the self-assessment powers for Government agencies Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC), Aboriginal Housing Office (AHO) and Landcom to support them to deliver more homes.

If we were able to put a terrace on 5% of lots of land zoned R2, we would get 67,500 new homes, which is more than 20% of what NSW needs to deliver by 2029. That’s why I’ve written recently to councils whose LEPs do not permit terraces and small apartment blocks in these residential zones.

This will allow LAHC, AHO and Landcom to self-assess projects of up to 75 dwellings to provide them with greater ability to provide social and affordable housing as soon as possible. We’ve also redirected Landcom’s $300 million dividend into direct spending on housing, which means that over the next six years, Landcom will help to deliver more than 20,000 homes. Over decades Landcom has helped to get thousands of people into homes – a great Labor initiative that has delivered and we are asking it to deliver even more in metropolitan and regional communities to address the housing crisis.

These types of houses are critical to confront the housing crisis. We are not using our land well and it is costing us. This Government is making infill housing a priority and taking steps to rebalance population and housing growth around transport networks. We need to see increased density in established suburbs around town centres, close to transport. In addition, the Productivity Commissioner recently released a report that said homes delivered in established communities with existing infrastructure cost $75,000 less on average to deliver. Young people in NSW deserve an opportunity to live close to their parents, rather than with their parents. We have to be able to build homes and communities that people want to live in, close to transport, jobs and amenities.

What policy settings do you believe offer the change to stimulate delivery of infill residential development of social and affordable housing by the private sector while balancing community expectations?

There is a shared responsibility on all of us to deliver more housing supply and more affordable housing. There is no silver bullet to the housing crisis, and the policy the Government has announced so far is not designed to be the only factor but will form part of the solution. The Government will continue to develop policies to streamline the planning process and deliver more homes, faster, in places near to transport and jobs. In the context of the Housing Accords period beginning in June 2024, the Government will have further announcements and policies in the coming months, to kick-start housing delivery in NSW to meet our housing targets.

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Anoulack Chanthivong Minister for Building and Minister for Fair Trading and Better Regulation

The Institute fully supports the work of the office of the Building Commissioner and the role they have taken to strengthen legislation to ensure delivery of quality built outcomes. With a review being undertaken into the building act, can you provide us with your assurance that the legislated role Architects have in the delivery of multiple housing projects in NSW will be protected? The NSW Government has committed to creating a single Building Act to consolidate existing legislation and reduce red tape and duplication caused by different rules scattered across the statute books.

With a rapidly ageing population, and an aged care sector under enormous pressure, what initiatives can the NSW government offer to support the ability for residents to agein-place in their own homes with safety and dignity? Every person across New South Wales should have access to a safe and secure place to call home.

This is a once in a generation opportunity to ensure that NSW’s building laws are fit for purpose.

In the building space, we’re committed to working with industry and the community to deliver more and different types of homes across NSW. That’s why across government we’re working to lift accessibility and liveability standards for the new homes we get into the market.

We’re working closely with industry and the community, including the Australian Institute of Architects to get the design of the proposed Building Act right.

The Government will continue to work with industry and the community to deliver compliant, safe and trustworthy housing that meets the needs of our community. ■

This is a codesign process and we want all the voices at the table, including when it comes to discussions about the future state of licensing, enforcement and capability development. Architects are crucial in designing compliant, safe and resilient buildings and play an even broader role in working across industry to restore confidence to the NSW construction industry. In working with the Australian Institute of Architects and the Architects Registration Board, we’re taking an approach that will ensure they continue to central to our state’s building laws.

19 Waterloo Street | SJB | Photo: Anson Smart

2023 NATIONAL ARCHITECTURE AWARDS – NSW WINNERS

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National Award for Public Architecture Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney Modern building Traditional Owners: The Gadigal People Architect: SANAA (Lead Consultant) and Architectus (Executive Architect) Builder: Richard Crookes Constructions Photo: Iwan Baan

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The Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture – Houses (New) 19 Waterloo Street Traditional Owners: The Gadigal People Architect: SJB Builder: Promena Projects Photo: Anson Smart

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National Commendation for Residential Architecture – Houses (New) Mossy Point House Traditional Owners: The Yuin People of the Yuin Nation Architect: Edition Office Builder: Smith and Primmer Photo: Rory Gardiner

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National Award for Residential Architecture – Alterations and Additions Balmain House Traditional Owners: The Wangal People Architect: SAHA Builder: Keith March Constructions Photo: Saskia Wilson

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National award for Educational Architecture Cranbrook School – Hordern Oval Precinct Redevelopment Traditional Land Owners: The Gadigal People Architect: Architectus Builder: Richard Crookes Constructions Photo: Brett Boardman Photography

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The Lachlan Macquarie Award for Heritage Architecture Sydney Opera House Concert Hall Renewal Traditional Owners: The Gadigal People Architect: ARM Architecture Builder: Taylor Construction Photo: Daniel Boud

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National Commendation for Commercial Architecture Poly Centre, 210 George Street Traditional Owners: The Gadigal People of the Eora Nation Architect: Grimshaw Builder: BESIX Watpac Photo: Peter Bennetts

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National commendation for Commercial Architecture Yirranma Place Traditional Owners: Gadigal People of the Eora Nation Architect: SJB Builder: Mainbrace Constructions Photo: Anson Smart

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The Emil Sodersten Award for Interior Architecture Sydney Opera House Concert Hall Renewal Traditional Owners: The Gadigal People of the Eora Nation Architect: ARM Architecture Builder: Taylor Construction Photo: Chris Bennett

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National commendation for interior Architecture The Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney Modern Building, Gallery Shop Traditional Owners: Gadigal People of the Eora Nation Architect: Akin Atelier Builder: EMAC Constructions Photo: Rory Gardiner

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National commendation for Sustainable Architecture Lane Cove House Traditional Owners: Cammerraygal People of the Eora Nation Architect: SAHA Builder: Keith March Constructions Photo: Saskia Wilson

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National commendation for Small Project Architecture Dimensions X / Farm Stay Traditional Owners: The Wonnarua People Architect: Peter Stutchbury Architecture Builder: Dimensions X, Hinton Homes, Jarrah Wells Design and Form Photo: Alejo Achaval

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2023 National Emerging Architect Prize Ben Peake | Carter Williamson Architects Ben Peake is awarded the 2023 NSW Australian Institute of Architects Emerging Architect Prize in recognition of his extensive leadership and demonstration of the role of architects as agents of social and cultural change. As Design Director of Carter Williamson Architects, Ben is an esteemed leader and colleague, responsible for many of the practice’s awarded projects and expanding the company’s capability into public architectural projects. He is an important mentor to the next generation of emerging architects and graduates and sits at the forefront of the company’s gender and diversity policies. In 2021, Ben’s contribution to the growth and values alignment of Carter Williamson Architects was recognised on an industry level and was awarded the NSW Chapter Best in Practice Prize.

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