Officer Woods
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DESIGN STATEMENT
The site for our proposal is the City of Melville in Perth, spacious middle-suburbia, zoned R25-30, where 700-1100m2 'mother' lots are the predominant type. We are interested in the band of suburbs where battleaxe subdivision has been the ubiquitous densification strategy since the late sixties. The typical street condition is characterised by deep verges between road and property boundaries, wide crossovers and driveways and six metre setbacks for houses. These pervasive suburban elements are inefficient, largely vacant and increasingly dry. Houses have turned their backs on the front yard, as formal front rooms migrated and swelled to rear open plan living areas. Bedrooms and garages typically face the street, leaving the front yard isolated and redundant.
In the stretched linear space of the Perth suburbs, the streets seem horizontally expressed; low, spreading and expansive. On a hot day, a dark night, or in the rain, it is a long way between figured objects, patches of shade and front doors.
The proposal has three major strategies to enhance the public and private domain, each with potential for variety, flexibility and adaptable widespread application.
1. FORECOURTS
The first strategy distributes all parking onto the public space of the verge. Roads become the domain of wheeled vehicles; footpaths and front yards the domain of people and pets. Battleaxe driveways, (currently 15% of lot area), are reconfigured as linear garden corridors connected to the street, so that the internal street edge is stepping, varied and elastic. The rituals of the car, around the coming and going of people, have been lost from public life as parking has been absorbed to private internal areas. We propose parking in an intentionally under-programmed structure; a robust brick armature that is less a parking lot, more a covered assembly area, less a carport, more a forecourt.
The strategy provides dense blocks of shade to mitigate the horizontal thinness of our suburban landscape, and the strength of our sun. Parking may be consolidated to a maximum of four undercover bays, with the incentive of larger covered areas for collective or individual leisure, play, entertainment or house/garden/car maintenance activities. Colonnaded forecourts may extend over footpaths and into front setbacks to provide shady gathering spots and covered ways to front doors.
The use of bricks and clay pavers allows level changes to be subtlety accommodated and also allows for individual expression of each, limited to their natural variation within the overall design concept.
An iteration of the forecourt is the brick playport, responding to its domestic setting while establishing a presence that is different to a house. It is triple fronted, aggregative and collective; it resists purity, and tries to be companionable to its immediate and typological context. This playport registers the sun's movement, both seasonally and diurnally, through brick patterning and form. It is robust, low maintenance, chemical free and durable.
2. FULL FRONTAL
The second strategy advocates a return of the front room, housed in the empty garage or carport, directly addressing the street. With an economy of means, houses can have a commercial or civic presence in the public domain. It is also an opportunity for internal reconfiguration and extension; a spare room, granny flat, studio apartment, living or play room.
The flexibility of use afforded by a pre-existing large room with clear span provides genuine sustainability; possibilities for multi-generational occupancy, entrepreneurial opportunity, rental potential and flexible work arrangements.
3. UPCODING
The third strategy is for the densification of the battleaxe suburb by vertical subdivision. The strategy mandates minimum open space and takes advantage of the compressive strength of brick walls. Adding another floor to single storey houses creates 'suburban apartments', compact, two bedroom dwellings that are low maintenance, secure and private. Cantilevering upper floors shade existing openings and building form is shaped to minimise overshadowing/looking. Importantly, this density bonus scheme encourages the recycling of robust brick building stock, a highly sustainable undertaking. Upper floor brick construction provides excellent fire and acoustic separation, strong environmental performance and is easily managed by the residential building sector. The suburban apartment is an attractive housing model for renters, empty nesters, and first home owners.
CORE SAMPLE
By charging the front setback and verge, allowing for individual expression within the material continuity of brick, we hope that moving through this street is like taking a core sample through a heterogeneous substance.
This proposal posits that we are beyond Sarsaparilla, but also beyond Seaside. Traversing along the footpath, we hope that the experience is of a Great Australian Fullness.
