ALUCANA ARCHITECTURAL SYSTEMS

As an increasing number of people experience homelessness and housing stress in Australia, some architects are stepping outside their traditional roles to make an impact.

Hayball worked with the Australian Social Value Bank to evaluate the impact of good design, undertaking a pilot study on CRT+YRD, the housing it designed as part of the Nightingale Village project in Melbourne. Image: Tom Ross

Most architects I know are motivated to improve the quality of the built environment. For many, this goes beyond the physical to the societal – considering the ability of architecture to affect the wider community, including the most vulnerable people in our society.

Within the housing sector, there is a lot of great work being done with new housing models and award-winning social and affordable housing projects. Many architects are now taking on roles that move beyond the traditional arrangement, to make an impact beyond that which an individual project/client can deliver. In their roles as academics, developers, housing bureaucrats, board members and politicians, they are asking what more can be done to address complex housing issues.

The Brisbane Housing Company (BHC), for example, was born out of a collaboration between the Queensland government and the Brisbane City Council in an effort to try something new using some of the capital traditionally allocated to the Department of Housing. Since its formation in 2002, the company (for which I currently chair the board) has created more than 2,000 affordable and social housing dwellings; developed a real estate agency that makes an annual commitment to fund residents’ education, employment and social participation needs; brought institutional investment into the social and affordable housing sector; and been at the forefront of advocacy for a fairer housing system. My time with the exceptional board of directors (including another trained architect) has demonstrated that architectural training provides us with skills that allow us to contribute beyond our design and construction expertise.

In Australia, groups that have not previously struggled to find safe, secure and affordable housing are increasingly experiencing homelessness and housing stress. Evidence suggests that the cohort most at risk is single women over the age of 55.1 Governments and community housing providers such as BHC are looking for new ways to support this cohort. The Queensland not-for-profit organisation Sharing with Friends (SWF), for example, is seeking to transform the lives of older women through the development of a model in which groups of five women self-select to live together, each with their own home but with shared facilities. The aim is to develop a holistic intentional community model that can be replicated throughout the state.

The SWF design concept is a simple one, but the planning, management, financing and legal considerations are complex because, under this model, the women fund their individual space through their modest superannuation, while financing for land and communal spaces is sourced elsewhere. SWF is working directly with the women who have chosen co-housing not only because it is an affordable option but also because it provides a place where they can create a community with safety and support.

SWF approached multidisciplinary design practice Deicke Richards (where I was a director until recently) for advice. Deicke Richards worked with the not-for-profit to demystify the housing system, make connections with housing experts and public servants, and find other like-minded consultants to offer their time and advocacy. SWF now has its first site and hopes that the first group of women will each have a secure home this year.

Philanthropic housing developer My Home offers another example of the valuable contribution that architects can make beyond their traditional role. The organisation was founded by Western Australian architect Michelle Blakeley in 2018 in response to her awareness of rising homelessness in Perth.

My Home’s first project consists of 18 one-bedroom houses built on a land reserve owned by the Public Transport Authority in North Fremantle. Image: Perry Sandow

A public–private partnership, My Home facilitates the private sector to use underutilised public land to provide permanent housing for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. It follows the internationally adopted Housing First model, which connects people experiencing homelessness with long-term (rather than transitional) housing as quickly as possible, before the provision of other support services. My Home secures land from state or local government or church groups and builds high-quality dwellings using government grants and private funding. (Private-sector funding for construction is in the form of either tax-deductible donations or impact investment.) The land remains in the ownership of the government or church group, with tenancy and asset management carried out by a community housing provider (CHP). The first project, with 18 one-bedroom houses, was completed in nine months with CHP St Pat’s in Fremantle.

To bring this housing to fruition, Blakeley wears many hats. Having founded My Home, she initially brought all the parties to the table. She is the chair of the skills-based board and her practice, Michelle Blakeley Architect, designs the prefabricated dwellings using Passive House principles. Blakeley credits her architectural training for her solution- and action-focused mindset, and cites her problem-solving skills as central to navigating this initiative.

When it comes to the housing design and construction process, many consultants fulfil their duties and move on. But some architects remain with the project until it is handed over (and beyond). The ability to develop a clear vision for a project, and the tenacity to see it through to occupation, requires a clear understanding of factors such as funding models and tax structures, which are not part of formal architectural training. Planning schemes, building codes, investment mandates and hurdle rates have implications for the design, requiring architects to compromise and adjust while remaining focused on the vision.

The Australian Institute of Architects’ National Architecture Awards are increasingly recognising social and affordable housing projects. In 2023, Habitat on Juers, a social housing project by Refresh Studio for Architecture, was awarded a National Commendation for Residential Architecture – Multiple Housing. Located in Logan City, south of Brisbane, the project consists of 16 adaptable and accessible units in a mix of one- and two-bedroom apartments and two- and three-bedroom townhouse-like dwellings. It is a beautiful and thoughtful project that focuses on balancing the most important (and sometimes conflicting) aspects of multi-residential living: community and privacy.

Habitat on Juers, designed by Refresh Studio for Architecture, was one of 20 social and affordable housing demonstration projects undertaken as a partnership between the Housing Partnerships Office, Building Asset Services and the Office of the Queensland Government Architect. Image: Scott Burrows

The project is part of Refresh’s work across the housing continuum. Founders Erhard Rathmayr and Monika Obrist bring their European education and experience to their projects, focusing on sustainability and developing models that allow more people to experience the benefits and sense of community that city living can provide. Their work is based on “gentle” density, a framework that reduces the cost of infrastructure while creating more communal social space.

The practice develops many of its own projects, which gives it more control and influence over all elements of the process. Through these projects, which also include Longfellow Terraces and Habitat on Terrace, Refresh demonstrates what is possible when we sacrifice the backyard to create more community space and reduce costs. The team has stepped firmly into the centre of conversations about finance, policy and regulation, refusing to accept that these areas are beyond the architects’ sphere of influence.

In 2022, Schored Projects and Monash University’s XYX Lab teamed up to publish A Design Guide for Older Women’s Housing,2 which centres around the voice of older women with experience of homelessness and housing insecurity. The document, which was funded by the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation in Melbourne, is an open resource that aims to assist community housing providers, developers, architects, specialist agencies and anyone who is delivering affordable housing for older women. Beautifully illustrated, it is organised around nine design principles, each of which addresses a specific place or room within a house. While the guide is urban-centric, a similar methodology could be applied in regional areas where housing needs can be quite different. The authors, Samantha Donnelly and Sophie Dyring, are both architects with extensive experience in housing design. But this work has a greater impact on improving housing quality than either could make in their individual project work.

A Design Guide for Older Women’s Housing, by Schored Projects and Monash University’s XYX Lab, is based on the idea that design that specifically addresses the needs of older women increases the investment’s social value.
Image: supplied

The idea that “you can’t improve what you don’t measure” underpinned Hayball’s Social Value Pilot Study.3 Hayball worked with the Australian Social Value Bank (ASVB) to develop the framework to gather and evaluate qualitative, quantitative and monetised data to evaluate the impact and value of good design for people and communities. The pilot study was undertaken on CRT+YRD, one of the six apartment buildings in the Nightingale Village in Brunswick, Melbourne. The project, which won the 2023 SIMNA Award for Innovation in Social Impact Measurement4, concluded that CRT+YRD provided $517,000 of social value in the first year (or $2.24 million over the succeeding five years). Much of this value comes from residents’ feelings of safety and sense of community.

The Social Value Pilot Study concluded, among other things, that 93 percent of residents talk to their neighbours more at CRT+YRD, which was designed with features to promote opportunities for social interaction.
Image: supplied

Measuring social value through evaluating the improvement in residents’ wellbeing in a consistent and robust way helps clients, architects, designers and policymakers to advocate for design that improves community and individual wellbeing. This is a relatively new concept in Australia, but in the UK, the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 requires projects to calculate social value and forms part of public procurement tenders (see “Capturing and communicating social impact” by Flora Samuels on page 68). Hayball hopes that others will adopt similar frame-works to the one it has developed (which has 15 key social outcomes) and share them to build on and refine the knowledge.

As we work within a broken housing system to advocate for change, we have a lot to learn from the generosity of those architects who seek to make a positive social impact, and from the wider group of advocates, activists, fellow board members and clients. Every well-designed housing project that improves the lives of its residents is effecting change, but we need to do more. We need to use our highly developed skills of listening, collaborating and problem-solving as well as our broad know-ledge to champion the change we want to see.

Let our collective optimism, and the lessons from so many who have expanded their sphere of influence, inspire us to be brave and to move beyond our self-imposed boundaries to create positive change.

Footnotes

1. Zoe Goodall et al., “‘We’ve done all the right things’ in Under Cover, older women tell their stories of becoming homeless,” The Conversation , 19 August 2022; theconversation.com/weve-all-done-the-right-things-in-under-cover-older- women-tell-their-stories-of-becoming-homeless-188356.
2. S. Donnelly et al., A Design Guide for Older Women’s Housing (Melbourne: Monash University, 2022); monash.edu/mada/research/labs/xyxprojects/a-design-guide-for-older- womens-housing.
3. Hayball in partnership with the Australian Social Value Bank, Social Value Pilot Study , 2023; hayball.com.au/wp-content/uploads/20231204_Social-Value_Pilot-Study_short-form.pdf.
4. Social Impact Measurement Network Australia (simna.com.au).

Source

Project

Published online: 6 Aug 2024

Words: Tania Davidge

Images: Peter Bennetts

Issue

Architecture Australia, July 2024