NMBW Architecture Studio

Project Team

Nigel Bertram, Marika Neustupny, Lucinda McLean, Laura Harper, Nicolas Ashby, Sam Hunter, Rowena Henry, Alessia Agosti, Dale Simpson, Wayne Floyd, Leanne Bowman

Theme

A mixed-use suburb

Setting

Trial site area, Moonee Ponds, Melbourne.

Project Summary

Adapt, improvise and overcome

Working from the premise that “flexibility is sustainability”, NMBW Architecture Studio in Melbourne has created an adaptable system that combines solid brick ‘cores’ with lightweight ‘sheds’ which can be added or removed as the owners’ needs change over time.

“Families and households grow and shrink, jobs change, visitors come and go, work and study occurs in peaks and troughs, businesses diversify and change direction, technology shifts,” Nigel Bertram says. “Good design enables change to happen easily, serving its current purpose well, but also acknowledging and accommodating as-yet unknown futures.”

NMBW’s proposal was inspired by a project they completed in Brunswick, where they elected to retain the original brick stables and perimeter wall while the house was demolished and rebuilt. “We needed to stabilise the perimeter wall with buttresses, and we decided to use them for functional purposes too, so they acted as dividers between the pantry cupboards in the kitchen, and supported timber for a seat in the dining room,” Bertram explains. “We found that the strong brick perimeter played both functional and structural roles, and it enabled us to create openness in the interior that we’ve developed further with the ‘cores’ and ‘sheds’ concept.”

The ‘core’ provides for flexible essential spaces such as bathrooms and kitchens, contains services such as plumbing, electricity and communications, and is solid, strong, insulated and heated. The attached ‘sheds’ can be large or small, high or low, heated or not and might contain bedrooms, studios, home offices, media spaces, playrooms and more. Their lightweight construction means they can be built inexpensively – even by the owner – so they are easy to modify, extend or subdivide. The spaces that exist between ‘cores’ and ‘sheds’ can be landscaped as gardens or courtyards, or left as buffers or service yards.

Brick’s durability and robustness make it essential to the design, because the ‘core’ is expected to endure for a lifetime or more, while the peripheral structures may come and go. “Brick is very flexible in that it can accommodate many different site conditions, such as changes in level, or the need for a new opening or pipe – these decisions can be made on site by the builder,” Bertram says. “Brick is also easy to work with compared to other materials that offer similar properties, such as precast concrete, which demands a lot of pre-planning and requires a crane to install.”

Bertram says that their easily adaptable system has the potential to add diversity to the suburbs, because it can be infinitely reconfigured, and caters for a multitude of uses on one site from housing to shops to offices to warehouses.

“The suburbs are always being modified, people are constantly building extensions, adding a shed or landscaping the garden, and to think that we as architects can impose one design solution on that condition is not applicable for the mass market,” Bertram says.

“So we were interested in setting up a framework that offers a more efficient use of the land, and allows and encourages different things to happen,” he continues. “It’s not about coming up with a beautiful thing that some people can’t afford, or that doesn’t suit their needs. This is about infrastructure as opposed to image, and what it allows to happen, rather than what it looks like.”