Session 4 - new propositions, questioning politics, planning and policy

New Propositions, Q uestioning

Politics, Planning and Policy

We acknowledge the tradition of custodianship and law of the Country on which the University of Sydney is located. We pay our respects to those who have cared, and continue to care for, Country.

Session 4

Date: Thursday 29 April 12–1:30pm AEST

LIVING IN THE CITY: EXEMPLARY SOCIAL AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING DESIGN

New Propositions, Q uestioning Politics, Planning and Policy

Moderator: Olivia Hyde

Speakers: Peter John Cantrill, Nicole Gurran, Joel Sherwood-Spring, Genevieve Zoe Murray

OH = Olivia Hyde, PJC = Peter John Cantrill, NG = Nicole Gurran

5 Abstract

6 Introduction Olivia Hyde, Professor of Practice, Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning

8 Waterloo: A Work in Progress Peter John Cantrill, City of Sydney

24 Revaluing (public) housing Prof Nicole Gurran, Director of the Henry Halloran Trust, Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning

28 Joel Sherwood-Spring and Genevieve Zoe Murray, Future Method Studio

32 Discussion

38 Bios

Abstract

This session turns to Sydney and to some of the political, economic, urban planning and policy questions with which contemporary (and historical) housing projects intersect.

Peter John Cantrill from the City of Sydney introduced the redevelopment process for Waterloo Estate, which has been ongoing since 2010. The social housing complex in central Sydney, built and completed in the 1970s, is home to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. He described how the redevelopment process has been marked by repeated shifting of the planning authority between local (city) and State governments and how di erent priorities led to the production of di erent urban design schemes for the site. He focused on the City of Sydney’s counter proposal, which aimed to create a design that was more in tune with people’s needs. Among other things, this involved increasing the amount of sunlight to streets and parks; improving accessibility for people with di erent abilities; providing a more community-oriented arrangement of buildings; and increasing the proportion of a ordable housing. It became clear that, in the planning process, political agendas and economic pressure came up against fundamental questions of density, accessibility, social cohesion and the future of the existing communities in Waterloo Estate.

Urban planner and policy analyst, Professor Nicole Gurran, highlighted the structural and systemic conditions underlying the crisis in a ordable and social housing in Australia. She argued that the accumulation of wealth from private land and housing development has not only underpinned the professions of architecture and urban planning since colonisation, but has also been a key driver of the national economy, in which the real estate and construction industries play an important role. Critiquing the continuing calls from politicians for even more deregulation in the housing market, she identified potential solutions in the form of more substantial public funding and a decoupling of social and a ordable housing from a highly financialised real estate sector. She acknowledged both the limits of design within the current conditions, but also the power of projects—such as those presented by Lacaton & Vassal—to o er a radical critique of the housing situation in Australia and prompt a reconsideration of the role and responsibility of the state in delivering good and decent housing.

The session’s moderator, Olivia Hyde, read out the important contribution by Future Method Studio, the interdisciplinary and collaborative practice of Joel Sherwood Spring and Genevieve Zoe Murray, who were unable to attend. Future Method Studio introduced the Future Planning Centre, which opened in 2016 as the home base for the Waterloo Public Housing Action Group. The Centre provides a critical space for discussion and support for the inhabitants of the Waterloo Estate housing complex during the redevelopment planning process. The authors of the paper further argued that the conflation of urban planning, policies and police violence that characterised Australia as a colonial state continues to exist, and that much more careful attention needs to be paid to the implications of this for contemporary housing-related issues.

My name is Olivia Hyde. I’m Professor of Practice in Architecture here at the University of Sydney and also the Director of Design Excellence at the New South Wales Government Architect’s O ce. It’s my great pleasure to welcome all of you to the beautiful Chau Chak Wing Museum here on the grounds of Sydney University and also to welcome all of those who are joining us online. The recently opened museum in this beautiful building holds the historic collections of the University. It’s open seven days a week, and it’s free. So, come on down.

I’d like to start by acknowledging that we meet on Aboriginal land. Sydney University is constructed on the land of the Gadigal, the grass tree people: ‘gadi’ means grass tree and ‘gal’ means people. Coming to the talk today, I entered the campus from City Road and passed a group of recently planted gadi. It’s a small gesture, but it’s a really important one, a start towards the acknowledgement in the design of our built environment that we are on Country. A start towards the reconciliation we must all work towards. We are surrounded by Aboriginal culture here: Parramatta Road is an ancient Aboriginal road, and Victoria Park is an ancient meeting place for di erent groups. It is no coincidence that a university took up this location. I’d like to welcome all Aboriginal people joining us today and pay my respects to those who have cared and continue to care for Country.

This is session 4 of the Rothwell Chair Symposium “Living in the City.” The Rothwell Chair was established following a major gift from alumni Garry and Susan Rothwell with the purpose to develop, through innovation in architecture and urbanism, the capacity to create environments which improve people’s quality of life. It’s great that they are joining us here today in the audience.

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal are the inaugural Rothwell Chairs, and this symposium is the launch of their three-year program of involvement. It’s a fantastic initiative and a real honour to be here today. In this session, we will be looking into some of the economic planning and policy questions faced by architectural and urban design teams involved in local a ordable housing projects. Obviously, this is an area that is of particular interest and importance to us working at the Government Architect’s O ce, where we seek to champion good design within government.

Unfortunately, two of our speakers, Matthew Bennett and Future Method, represented by Joel Sherwood-Spring and Genevieve Murray, are no longer able to attend. I know this is as disappointing for them as it is for us. Future Method have provided a short presentation that they have asked me to read out on their behalf. Of course, we are very lucky to still have two highly accomplished and expert speakers in Nicole Gurran and Peter John Cantrill.

Peter John Cantrill is an urban designer and, currently, the Urban Design Program Manager in Strategic Planning and Urban Design at the City of Sydney (City). Peter John worked in private practice for over 25 years in a range of roles, including as a director at Tzannes Associates, before he started at the City, and he sees himself as having undertaken three substantial urban design projects in his life. I think it’s really interesting to reflect on that, in terms of the length of time these projects actually take. The projects are the Gungahlin Town Centre in Canberra, Central Park and, now, Waterloo. Peter John has taught at every major architecture school in Australia and has won state, national and international awards in architecture, planning and landscape architecture. He is also co-author with Philip Thalis of the fabulous book Public Sydney: Drawing the City, a collective work involving the contributions of hundreds of students and over 100 practitioners. Peter John will be taking us through the City of Sydney’s alternate approach to the remaking of the Waterloo Estate. The change in program has allowed for a more detailed presentation of this work, which is definitely an upside. Just to note that Peter John will be talking as himself, not on behalf of the City.

Olivia Hyde Introduction

Nicole Gurran is an urban planner and policy analyst, whose research focuses on comparative urban planning systems and approaches to housing and ecological sustainability. Nicole is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning here at the University of Sydney and Director of the Henry Halloran Trust. She has led and collaborated on a series of research projects on aspects of urban policy, housing, sustainability and planning, all funded by the ARC (Australian Research Council) or AHURI (Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute), as well as State and local government. Her recent research has included AHURI inquiries on a ordable housing supply. Nicole will be giving us a short overview of the critical economic policy and planning context of social and a ordable housing here in New South Wales. It’s admirable that you are able to do that in a short way, Nicole.

Future Method Studio comprises Wiradjuri interdisciplinary artist Joel SherwoodSpring and white settler Genevieve Zoe Murray. Future Method works collaboratively on projects that sit outside established notions of contemporary art and architecture, attempting to transfigure spatial dynamics of power through discourse, political activism, pedagogies, art, design and architectural practice. The studio is focused on examining the contested narratives of Australia’s urban culture and indigenous history in the face of ongoing colonisation. Clearly, this issue of Indigenous history and colonisation is of particular importance in any conversation about housing, especially social housing, with Aboriginal people forming a major group of those housed in this type. Future Method have recently been involved in the Waterloo project and they will talk to this and other ideas. Following the presentations, we’ll move to discussion, and I encourage you to participate. We will have a roving mic in the room and please, if you are online, enter your questions into the chat and Kate Goodwin will be kindly and expertly collating these for our guests to respond to. Thank you, Kate.

“Living in the City: Exemplary Social and A ordable Housing Design” is the title of this symposium. I think, the emerging subtitle is: “How do we want to live?” On Tuesday night, Anne and Jean-Philippe presented to us an architecture of both a ordability and pleasure, simplicity and generosity, and they spoke of the idea of building with extreme precision, extreme delicacy, extreme kindness. I was struck by two aspects of their talk. Firstly, that their approach of profound care to place—be it a rural or a city site—had such strong resonance with the ideas of designing with country that we are beginning to grapple with here in Australia. The house in the pine forest, where not one tree was removed or damaged, was a beautiful example of this. The Bordeaux Grand Parc social housing project clearly brought this same rigour, exactitude and care to this very di erent context. The second idea is one to do with e ort. For all of us involved in designing, planning and delivering the built environment here in Australia, the road to quality can seem very di cult at times, and the sky far bluer in other climes. We face very real challenges here, but the presentations on Tuesday and yesterday helped remind me that all places and all projects face challenge. The Bordeaux project by Lacaton & Vassal as a commission was clearly the result of many, many years of research and involvement and dedication. Realisation of the project was a result of intense focus and work far beyond the remit of traditional architectural services. Projects like this, that change the way we think and work, are always hard.

The fantastic projects presented in session two—all alternatives to standard housing and delivery models—exhibit this same ground-changing quality and the e ort that goes with it. For us at the Government Architect, these projects are powerful examples of the value and potential of design. It is in this context of care and e ort that I’d like to pass, first, to Peter John Cantrill to talk about Waterloo and then to Nicole. I’ll wrap up with the talk from Future Method.

Thank you.

Peter John Cantrill

Waterloo: A Work in Progress

Thank you very much for that kind introduction. I, too, would like to pay my respect to the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, on whose land we are today and on whose land I live and work. Most particularly, because this project is on the Land of the Gadigal, and that land had never been ceded, and also because Redfern and Waterloo have been the home of the highest concentration of urban Aboriginal life in Australia in the last few decades and continue to be so today. Waterloo is a place where people from many, many nations all over Australia have found home and a social, welcoming life. It’s a home of political movement, of struggle, for Aboriginal people. In a way, the work we’re presenting today needs to have at its heart the potential benefits for those people.

I’d also like to say that I’m speaking on my own behalf today, not as the City of Sydney. Any opinions I express are not those of the City of Sydney but my own. I’d also like to thank everyone at the City of Sydney who has worked with me on this project—in particular, my director Graham Jahn; my colleagues at Strategic Planning and Urban Design, particularly Ken Baird, who’s worked alongside me for some time and worked diligently and very hard; the Council of the City of Sydney; the Central Sydney Planning Committee and the various expert panels of the City, whose advice I have taken and sought, particularly the Design Advisory Panel; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Panel and several other expert panels who’ve advised us on this work. Those expert panels are to do with design, but also with the problem of implementing a ordable and social housing in the city today. I’ve also had many consultants work with me, in particular the architects MAKO and Tim Williams, as well as economic consultants, social consultants and so forth, and sta at the City of Sydney, who work, day in and day out, in Waterloo and have helped me connect with the people of Waterloo. This work is an e ort, our best e ort, for the people of Waterloo. Even though it’s our best e ort, I also acknowledge that it’s probably not good enough. That’s the problem of contemporary society—of not being able to do good enough for those people.

I’ll start with a bit of history. Of course, all projects are situated both spatially but also temporally. Perhaps the chief move in recent history was in 1973, when the State government resumed land and made a new social housing project in Waterloo. That resumption was hard fought. It was the result of the government taking people’s homes and demolishing them. They did that by not allowing new work on homes, so homes fell into disrepair. There were great social movements as a reaction to this move by government, including the green bans. The Waterloo housing that we see today was eventually opened by the Queen of England.

In 2010, the State government had a project, called the Built Environment Plan 2, led by the Government Architect’s o ce. This is an illustration from the City’s response to that plan in 2011 (fig. 1a+b).1 You can see from that plan, and particularly the City’s response to that plan, the intention was to keep the major housing towers and slab blocks that were built in the 1970s, and then to carefully redevelop the rest of the estate at a low medium scale. In 2014, the State government appointed a new agency, Urban Growth New South Wales, and their work revived interest in the redevelopment of Waterloo. You can see in the bottom right-hand corner of the main illustration the area that we’re talking about today. Their vision had, I think, nine towers of around 30 storeys with medium-rise buildings of around eight storeys in between those.

1 City of Sydney, Built Environment Plan 2. 2011. A copy of the plan can be found here: http://www.redwatch. org.au/RWA/bep2/110331cos

Their work led to the placement of a metro station at Waterloo. The choice for the location of a new metro station was between the University of Sydney, who desperately need a metro station, and Waterloo, who also desperately needed a metro station. From the State government’s point of view, the latter would allow the redevelopment of housing that was falling into disrepair and needed rejuvenating. Of course, part of the reason, but not the sole reason, for the bad condition of the housing was the lack of spending on its maintenance.

Figure 1b. Artist’s view of Waterloo-Redfern housing redevelopment looking north-east, RWA BEP 2, January 2011.

Redfern–Waterloo

Figure 1a. Redfern–Waterloo Draft Built Environment Plan 2 (BEP2), City of Sydney, 2011.

Urban Growth put together three alternatives, which they presented to the community of Waterloo. They all had approximately 6,500 to 7,000 dwellings on a very small site. Then, a quite extensive consultation was conducted with the community of Waterloo to decide how to move forward. That consultation had limits placed on it. The main limit was that the density could not be questioned. The only question was about how you could achieve this density in the best possible way. Of course, that density for the City of Sydney was unprecedented and quite extraordinary.

This slide shows (in orange) Waterloo with about 6,800 dwellings proposed on a gross area of around 19 hectares. You can see (in light blue) other areas in the centre of metropolitan Sydney which have about the same number of dwellings (fig. 2). You can see the size of these other areas that have the same number of dwellings, so an extraordinary concentration of development was being proposed. I should note that several of these areas are in the top ten densest areas on SA2 level in the whole of Australia. In fact, at that time, in 2016, eight of the ten densest areas in Australia are illustrated here. You can also look at it another way: on this site, how many dwellings are normally accommodated (fig. 3)? This shows the other aspect of the density, remembering that density is an abstraction because it’s a quotient. It’s very di cult to understand a quotient—you have the area and the number, and then you derive a figure from that. We’re illustrating the density here in terms of equivalent areas of the same number of dwellings, and then how many dwellings are accommodated in equivalent areas. This gives you some context on the di culty of the task that was faced.

This was the preferred master plan that was released by the Land and Housing Corporation in January 2019 for the 19-hectare site with around 6800 dwellings. It is expressed mathematically as 360 dwellings per hectare, for those who are interested. It included 17 towers of up to 40 storeys in height, and involved the complete demolition of all the housing on this site as well as the potential resumption of George Street. These are illustrations that the City drew to give a three-dimensional understanding of the proposal. This was because the proposal that came from the Land and Housing Corporation was not accompanied by full three-dimensional drawings.

Figure 2. Comparison areas by dwellings. City of Sydney, 2016.

Figure 3. Comparison areas by dwellings. City of Sydney, 2016.

Figure 4. Study showing in brown areas that do not meet the requirements for winter sunlight in the masterplan preferred by the LAHC. City of Sydney, 2016.

The City quickly analysed the project. The first thing the City realised was that the majority of the open space or parkland was actually created by closing a street owned and managed by the City of Sydney, George Street. This has the major bicycle route to the City of Sydney from the town centre of Green Square, a new area for around 60,000 people, which the City has been developing over the last decade. It passes along George Street, north-south. It’s a vital link. That bike path would have to be re-routed as part of this plan.

The open space that resulted had very little mid-winter sunlight (fig. 4). The City has a rule of thumb, which is based on expert understanding: For parks to operate well, the grass needs about four hours of sun every day of the year to withstand the kind of activity that parks experience. The white shows where that amount of sunlight was available, the brown where it was not available. In the City’s view, this was inadequate.

Our understanding—particularly from our o cers, who spend time with the people at Waterloo, but also from what the people of Waterloo themselves said—that this was a genuine community that liked living at Waterloo, enjoyed their life there and felt some security in their occupation. The City shared this view, and could not see why high-density towers, only built in the 1970s, should be demolished. The community made this very clear. This is just a very short film clip, which discusses a community-derived work of art (fig. 5).

Di erent voices from video:

“It’s not a legal issue. It’s really a moral issue. Not, can we do this, but should we do this? Is this the right thing to do with public land?”

“We’re going to be going into the buildings and talking to people one on one about putting lights just on the windows.”

“An LED coloured light of their choosing, reflecting how they feel towards the redevelopment.”

“And perhaps symbolise the kind of colourful lives that have gone on within that building.”

“The battle of Waterloo is about people—not buildings.”

“Art is always a weapon.”

“We need to show the human side of what the redevelopment means for a lot of people.”

“This shows the world Waterloo.”

“One of the things I want to see from the LED light is maybe just the pulse of the place. Regardless of all that they’ve tried to do to kill that pulse, it’s still here.”

Video stops.

Our Lord Mayor and some representatives of the community of Waterloo and our councillors came to us in Strategic Planning and Urban Design and said: What would you do here? What is actually happening here, can you tell us? We had to reply: Lord Mayor, we can’t do anything. We don’t have the planning power here. That planning power rests with the State government, so we’re unable to do anything. But she said to us again: What would you do here? We said, of course: We would go and sit with the community and form a plan,

Figure 5. “We Live Here,” 2017. Art & About project supported by the City of Sydney. Photograph by Ed Hurst.

like we do elsewhere in our community. We’re unable to do that because Land and Housing Corporation have done very extensive consultation with the community. We can’t give false promises to the community by pretending that we can do some planning here. But the Lord Mayor insisted. She said to us: You have to show me what you would do. I need to know, and I need to see some context for this.

Very quickly we put together an alternative approach for the City for this site. This illustrates, on your left as you’re looking at it, the City’s approach and on the right, the preferred master plan that Land and Housing Corporation had put forward. These are just some illustrations of the city’s preferred master plan. The main move was to make a very large park for the number of people living here, a park big enough for all the activities and all the di erent people. The park is about the same size as neighbouring Redfern Park and Alexandria Park. This shows what the park would be like (fig. 6). At this high intensity of development, streets need to be wide. They need to be full of trees, they need to have social activity along them. This would be the main street, George Street (fig. 7). The other streets, the residential areas, also need to be calm, have low tra c speed and be a place for people in their houses to look out onto (fig. 8).

Also, because Waterloo to the west of George Street is flat and then steeply slopes to the east, going up to Pitt Street, it needed to be a place where everyone—no matter what your ability—could walk around and go through (fig. 9). These are just some illustrations of what we proposed in our alternative approach (fig. 10). This is looking from a small laneway. This is at the south end of the park (fig. 11). Also, of course, we said that at least the two point-towers and at least two of the four slabs should be kept. Our ambition was really to keep all of them. This is another film clip [no sound].

This gives just some impression of what the place might be like in the City’s alternative approach. Here you see the park. We’re looking south over the new park here, and this is in the main street, George Street, which will be widened to 30 meters. This is another view from the south end of the park. You can see the playgrounds. This is a view from the neighbourhood. This is what was proposed by the Land and Housing Corporation. This is what we said should occur in terms of its regional context. Again, this is what the Land and Housing Corporation were proposing, and this is what we say would be a better alternative. Again, this is the Land and Housing Corporation proposal at the time, and this is the City’s alternative approach. There are significant di erences but, generally, the main di erence is that we reduced the intensity of development. Rather than almost 7,000 dwellings, we propose 5,300 dwellings. We thought that was as dense as it could be to make a good place. Rather than 40-storey towers, the buildings were generally 5, 9 and 13 storeys high. We retained buildings, we kept more trees and there was a more equitable distribution of the building bulk across the site. The neighbourhood was made of streets and walkways and was a fine-grained permeable area.

As a result of some agitation by our political leaders, in 2019, the City and Land and Housing Corporation met to seek alignment between the two proposals. We were greatly assisted by the guidance of our colleagues in the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and the Government Architect’s o ce, who facilitated us talking together. In those discussions, we pointed out that more open space was needed, and Land and Housing Corporation agreed. We also pointed out that 40-storey towers could not be built on this land, because it is a ected by the flight path to the airport. Sydney airport, like all airports all over the world, has a plane of safe operation. To keep the airport operating safely, particularly in emergencies, the maximum height you could go to over Waterloo is 30 storeys, not the 40 storeys that were proposed.

We also pointed out that Land and Housing Corporation couldn’t build on those streets that we owned and managed. It wasn’t only George Street that they wanted to resume from us. They also wanted to narrow streets like John Street, in order to accommodate the density that they were proposing. They agreed to that. As a result, the Minister

Figure 6. Perspective view of the park. City of Sydney, Alternative Approach, Waterloo South, 2019.

Figure 7. Perspective view George Street. City of Sydney, Alternative Approach, Waterloo South, 2019.

Figure 8. Perspective view residential street. City of Sydney, Alternative Approach, Waterloo South, 2019.

Figure 9. Pedestrian connections. City of Sydney, Alternative Approach, Waterloo South, 2019.

Figure 10. Bird’s eye view. City of Sydney, Alternative Approach, Waterloo South, 2019.

Figure 11. Perspective rendering, view from the south end of the park. City of Sydney, Waterloo South Planning Proposal, 2019.

Figure 12. Waterloo South.

for Planning and Public Spaces granted the City the planning authority for this place. In May 2020, Land and Housing Corporation lodged a planning proposal request for Waterloo South (fig. 12). The area occupied by the point towers and the slabs, shown in red, was excised and would be considered at a later stage.

The request included the improvements that resulted from our conversations—a better park, more sunlight in the park, George Street remaining as a street, the regional bicycle path retained, no development on the city streets, some widening—I think there was one street that was widened from the previous proposal—and the heights reduced to meet the Sydney airport requirements. There were a few other minor changes. From the City’s analysis, there were still too many 30-storey towers, the development lots were too large, and they actually prohibited the participation of community housing providers. The City’s ambition was to have more a ordable and social housing on this site. They considered that the streets were still too narrow, that the amenity standards were too low, and that streets and walkways were not accessible for people of all abilities.

So, the City revised its concept. We were made aware that if we didn’t match the density of the proposal, which had been somewhat reduced, then our planning authority would come to nothing. Accordingly, we had to match the number of dwellings requested in the revision of the planning. We allocated a similar amount of community and other space. We reorganised things by having a most e cient street layout, so that there was more land to build on, which would reduce the intensity of development. We also continued the idea of making a lower-scale development overall. We also did more economic work, which proved to us that more a ordable housing could be provided at no cost to government. We also wanted to ensure that there was dedicated First Nations’ housing in the planning framework.

This is a revision of that earlier slide to give you an idea of the intensity of the task (fig. 13). This is what we set forward for our own ambition, which was to make better streets and parks that are accessible to everyone, that respond to the changing climate, that are social places, better buildings for a mixed-tenure community, where every building has good amenity regardless of its tenure, and where the building heights were primarily designed for the streets and the parks. This is an illustration of the new streets—George Street, the main street, at the top and a typical residential street at the bottom. We also propose two parks—the main park, which would be the centre of community life and big enough for all the various activities and people who would be able to use it; and a small park, which provides the only thing that the main park could not. It’s a quiet oasis that provides the kind of withdrawal that would not be possible in the busy main park. We also wanted to make sure that every building was a good building (fig. 14). In the proposal that came to us, the towers, which would have about two-thirds of the population, would be market housing. The low buildings, which contained about a third of the total number of apartments, would have to have less amenity. Our idea was to make sure that everyone had good amenity.

We also wanted to make smaller building lots, so that there would be many more buildings by many more architects with many more entries onto the streets to provide more variety, and we carefully placed the height in relation to the streets and the parks. This summarises the current planning proposal—what the City is proposing on your right-hand side and, on the left, the request that came to us from the Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC). The first thing we said is that the streets need to actually revive other streets that would have been resumed and taken away by their predecessors in the 1970s. John Street and Mead Street and Pitt Street were revived. Also, the streets should be wider, they should run north-south in the cardinal points to get more light into them, and they should be accessible. This illustration shows, in yellow, where streets are not accessible to people of all abilities and, in darker yellow, the newly created streets. We said that the streets should be laid out along the topography so they’re accessible, and that special pathways and ramps

Figure 13. Comparison areas by dwellings, Waterloo South. City of Sydney, 2016.

Figure 14. City of Sydney, Waterloo South Planning Proposal, February 2021.

Figure 15. Comparison building height in storeys. [Left:] LAHC request, May 2020. Visualisation by City of Sydney. [Right:] City of Sydney, Planning Proposal, February 2021.

and so forth should be made up the slope. We also said that the shops and community services should be on the ground and on the street. The proposal that came from LAHC was a kind of shopping centre with underground shopping and above ground services and other smaller things scattered all over the site. We said, you should make a main street and then it becomes the social heart of the place.

In relation to building heights—in order to get the number of dwellings that LAHC had proposed, we had three towers widely spaced in the south, so that they wouldn’t interfere with the sunlight to the other residents, including the residents further south here. This medium-rise development would be higher where there’s better amenity on the wider main street in the parks, and lower along the other streets, based on the comparative amount of Sunlight in the streets. (fig. 15) This is a sectional view of the streets at the large scale in the section on the top right, as you’re looking at it. The central one shows the main street, George Street. The orange colour shows where there’s not enough light for trees to grow well. For trees to grow well in the streets they need around two hours of sunlight every day of the year, and these areas in orange have less than two hours of sunlight in the middle of winter. We said all the streets should be filled with more light, and the parks should be filled with more light. There was an improvement in the LAHC request, that we have a standard by which at least half of the parks need that, and they passed that. The small park that they proposed was just 50% and you had to count little bits of sunlight here and there. We said it needs to be more than 50%.

Another result of towers is that they produce uncomfortable and, sometimes, unsafe winds at ground level. This is a statistical measure of how fast the wind is moving at certain times of the year, but it was unacceptable to us that at the planning proposal stage there should be four points (shown in red and orange), where it would be unsafe on the streets according to the wind engineers (fig. 16). This illustrates a cross-section of both the request and what we were proposing (fig. 17). These are some views from the local area as a request and the proposal—from Redfern Park; across Alexandria Park; across the new park looking south (fig. 18); along George Street; and closer up.

Here is another movie that shows the revised approach by the City. This is coming up one of the minor streets towards the park, and then we’ll fade into the park looking south, back towards where we’re coming from. You can see the towers have now been added. From Redfern Park, this is the main street, George Street, with the taller medium-rise buildings, comparing the request made by LAHC and what we were proposing. In all these comparisons, it’s the same number of dwellings we’re looking at in the same area of the site. This is the LAHC request and then it’ll fade into what we’re proposing.

So, the same number of dwellings, much more a ordable housing and, in our economic analysis, that a ordable housing could be financed without any contribution from the State government. There would also be housing dedicated for First Nations peoples.

Figure 16. Comparison wind conditions at street level.

[Left:] LAHC request, May 2020. Visualisation by City of Sydney.

[Right:] City of Sydney, Planning Proposal, February 2021.

Figure 17. Comparison cross section through south of site. [Top:] LAHC request, May 2020. Visualisation by City of Sydney. [Bottom:] City of Sydney, Planning Proposal, February 2021.

Figure 18. Comparison perspective, view from main park looking south.

[Top:] LAHC request, May 2020.

Visualisation by City of Sydney.

[Bottom:] City of Sydney, Planning Proposal, February 2021.

Although it’s not possible for us to put this into statutory instruments because of the legislative framework that we put together, in our design guide we say that at least 10% of the a ordable housing should be dedicated to First Nations people, that the proportion of First Nations people living on the site should remain the same and that this would increase the amount of housing for First Nations people. We’ve also embedded regional and Torres Strait Islander people into the design process, both as practitioners and as people involved in the making of the juries, the making of briefs, and so forth. We also embedded higher and more certain sustainability standards.

Today, the Minister for Planning and Public Space has again taken the planning authority away from us and made himself the planning authority in order to address the doggedly uncooperative stance of LAHC towards us. The Minister has appointed an independent advisory panel, who would advise the Department of Planning, Infrastructure and Environment, and the Department will now take the City’s place in the planning process. Thank you.

NG

Thanks very much, Peter John. You’ve left it at a real moment of suspense. I’m Nicole Gurran—and thank you, Olivia, for the warm introduction earlier and for the invitation to speak at this very important symposium. Before I begin, let me also acknowledge the Traditional Gadigal owners of the land on which we meet today, and on which I live and work. Let me pay my respects to Elders, past, present and emerging, and particularly those who’ve fought tirelessly for their lands and communities in the Redfern Waterloo area and continue to do so.

On that note, I also acknowledge the very important work done by community-based teams, like Future Method Studio, who, unfortunately, weren’t able to be here today, but who have sent a text which Olivia Hyde will read out later.

Of course, I also acknowledge the City’s e orts to lead a planning process for Redfern Waterloo, which is both community-oriented and—it must be said—politically oriented, which means economically feasible. Let me just note, for the sake of transparency, that I have served on one of the City’s many advisory boards in relation to Redfern Waterloo, alongside Nathan Moran, the chief of the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council. I also acknowledge their tireless advocacy and advice in relation to Redfern Waterloo.

I’m not going to talk much more about Redfern Waterloo in my own comments, though I am going to start there. I want to take us to a wider conversation about the structural factors, which really explain where we are today and why, in my view, we are so far away from the socially informed architecture and politics that have been presented by the chairs of this symposium, Lacaton & Vassal.

To start with Redfern Waterloo. Way before I became an academic, I was a ‘baby planner’. My very first job was working with tenants. One of my first site visits, if you like, was a community meeting in Redfern Waterloo, in one of the towers which had just been refurbished (fig. 19). It’s mid-‘90s, I think it was 1996, and bed sits had been amalgamated to form one-bedroom units. The sole objective was to provide a better quality of life for the residents who, prior to that intervention, were unable to have visitors in their rooms. How can you socialise, if you’re confined to a bedroom? I was reminded of that moment in my own career and in our own housing history in Australia when I saw the work of Lacaton & Vassal, even though, of course, it was on a much larger scale than that intervention in the mid-‘90s in Redfern Waterloo.

Nowadays in Sydney, the goal of redeveloping social housing isn’t fundamentally about increasing space and dignity for residents or communities. It’s about—and we have to say it, we have to put this on the table—it is about maximising the real estate value of the site. This is partly to do with something that I would absolutely endorse—we need to keep increasing the supply of social housing, which is desperately needed despite the city’s heroic e orts

Nicole Gurran

Revaluing (public) housing

Figure 19. Public Housing at Waterloo: Henry Lawson Place; Dame Mary Gilmore Flats; and Henry Kendall Flats. February 2010. Photographer Mark Stevens, courtesy City of Sydney Archives

“Despite the absolute vertical rise of housing wealth in Australia, it seems that we can’t afford decent housing for our poor. This is a political choice. It is not a complicated economic puzzle or an impossible social problem.”

Nicole Gurran

on that matter. Despite the absolute vertical rise of housing wealth in Australia, it seems that we can’t a ord decent housing for our poor. This is a political choice. It is not a complicated economic puzzle or an impossible social problem. I’m probably preaching to the converted here, but I’m going to preach, a little. How did we arrive at this place, where the idea of preserving social housing or public housing towers and improving them—yes, on the public purse—has become radical politics?

I’m going to take you on a very short historical tour—and, again, for many of you this will be familiar, but I think it’s important to ground us in the events that have brought us here. I didn’t know it in the ‘90s, but they were actually a real turning point in Australian housing policy. At that time, when I started my housing career, about 10% of all new homes were being built as public housing. It didn’t remain in the sector—today we are at 1%, which is less than replacement level. We saw widespread e orts in Australia towards a national housing strategy, long abandoned. In New South Wales we had a Green Paper, which proposed all sorts of new non-market housing options—things like housing cooperatives, foregrounding choice for social housing tenants, non-marketised forms of ownership and, of course, the establishment of the New South Wales Aboriginal Housing O ce.

But things were also changing. We’d already started in Australia to see social housing as a form of social welfare, not actually of housing and welfare, which needed to be rationalised, only made accessible to the poorest of the poor, rather than being open to a much wider group of people. This group included people with full-time jobs, who were able to pay higher rents and did so, cross-subsidising the provision of social housing for people on lower incomes. In Australia, as in the rest of the world, we had embraced neoliberalism, which meant that we thought that markets could solve housing problems. We’ve been chasing those market solutions ever since that time. The Commonwealth and the States wound back their funding for social housing—as I said, now about 1% of new homes are public housing—and, instead, we focused on the private rental sector. We hoped that that would pick up the slack, especially if private landlords were incentivised via negative gearing. As we all know, negative gearing provides a tax incentive for property investors, who began to win big because of low interest rates and financial deregulation. Again, that was a global trend, which made borrowing very cheap, very easy. In addition, Australia had that special bonus of being a tax deduction as long as it was for housing.

“about 10% of all new homes were being built as public housing. It didn’t remain in the sector—today we are at 1%, which is less than replacement level.”

Nicole Gurran

We saw social housing estates as places of concentrated disadvantage, as though the people, not the policy settings, were the problem. The solution was renewal—nice word— and social mix, which has actually come to mean real estate redevelopment. The private rental sector did grow, partly because first home buyers were priced out of the market by investors and became middle class renters, who are often also unable to access decent rental housing because, unlike European countries and even most of the United States, we’ve done very little to help those in the private rental sector. Australia’s renters have very few protections from rent increases or eviction, and the income subsidy that’s paid to low-income renters is highly targeted and very hard to qualify for. Even that very targeted intervention leaves almost half of those recipients still in rental stress, paying more than 30% of their income on housing. In Sydney, nearly 70% of low-income renters pay more than 30% of their income on housing.

In New South Wales, we’ve flirted with things like inclusionary zoning, which requires a proportion of all new housing and new developments to be made a ordable to people on low and moderate incomes. We’ve got a State planning policy called a ordable rental housing, under which there’s a grab bag of policies. These include, for instance, providing granny flats in the backyard and will soon allow Airbnb-style rentals as well. None of these things are inherently problematic, in my view. However, in the absence of a properly funded social housing sector as a social net, in the absence of proper income support for the very poor and, of course, rental protections, continuing to rely on the private rental market for our low-income groups means that we are just playing around at the edges.

Can we reverse this? Can we change the politics of housing policy in Australia? I hope so, and I’ve made it my entire research career to try and contribute to that cause, but there are some really deep challenges.

The first of those, of course, is foundational. This is not unique to Australia, but I think it’s di erent, for instance, to the context in which Lacaton & Vassal are practising. That is our assumptions about land, property and real estate which, of course, date from colonisation. Making wealth from private land and from housing development has underpinned our professions in architecture and planning since colonisation. If we’re honest, it also explains the relative patterns of wealth and inequality that many of us in Australia continue to benefit from. Of course, we see those di erential patterns in Australian society. The politics of property in Australia stems from this foundational investment in housing as the source of our own personal financial wealth and security, which, over the past 40 years in Australia and the rest of the world, has grown exponentially into a financialised asset class. This is what housing researchers mean by the financialisation of housing—housing as a financialised asset class that’s far removed from the value of homes as places to live. However much we want to recalibrate homes as places to live and as the foundation of communities, instead we’ve become locked into a politics of preserving the status quo, protecting and boosting the financial value of housing assets to protect existing property owners at the expense of low- and moderate-income renters. The most recent example of this—out of an abundance of examples—is the government’s home builder grants to home renovators and builders rather than, for instance, investing in social housing.

Thirdly, the wider Australian economy is addicted to property wealth. Employment in the construction sector is a really important part of our economy. State stamp duties and consumer confidence depend on a stable and probably buoyant housing market. We’ve got to confront the economic importance of housing because it helps to explain the distorted political power of real estate lobbying groups when it comes to resisting sensible changes in economic and housing policy, such as changes to negative gearing.

The political approach has been to misdiagnose housing problems as a consequence of shortage brought about by regulation. We hear calls to liberate housing development to increase supply by, for instance, abandoning attempts to preserve rural lands, winding back protective measures to prevent sprawling, car-dependent development and socially isolated suburbs, and even winding back residential amenity in apartment buildings. These calls to wind back regulation to kickstart housing supply have been in our newspapers even in the last week, instead of the obvious and sensible call to redirect public funding towards new and enhanced social housing.

It is possible to redirect resources towards new construction in social housing. The beauty of having a non-market sector of the housing system is that it doesn’t a ect the value of real estate at all. In fact, it’s extremely protective of macro-economic stability, because it allows us to have a construction sector that is able to power on, irrespective of the peaks and troughs of the real estate cycle, producing houses to meet population growth and changing needs, rather than changes in house prices. There’s a multitude of funded proposals from housing advocates on the table at the moment, including a very modest proposal for just 10,000 new social housing dwellings per year. Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) research has shown how the government can use cheap loans to aggregate low-cost finance for non-profit housing developers—in fact, that scheme is up. All they lack is capital subsidy to get projects o the ground. Of course, if we redirected negative gearing towards a ordable long-term leases, even just for lower income earners, that would radically improve life for renters. Better still would be to target that tax resource towards generating new quality homes or renovations where there is a need to cater for growth and change. Of course, States could support renters and drive quality in the rental sector by introducing rental protections and standards, as called for by housing advocates like Shelter Australia and the tenants’ unions.

“Making wealth from private land and from housing development has underpinned our professions in architecture and planning since colonisation.”

Nicole Gurran

“housing as a financialised asset class that’s far removed from the value of homes as places to live... We’ve got to confront the economic importance of housing”

Nicole Gurran

Research undertaken during the COVID period showed that increased support for low-income earners allowed people to improve their housing conditions as well as their security. We should demand that the Commonwealth extend those rental subsidies so that, in future, lower income earners can a ord and can demand better quality homes. In this symposium, we’ve heard some fantastic models of non-market forms of housing provision. Those should absolutely be on the table, as well forms of non-profit ownership—such as the Assemble model demonstrated yesterday—models of deliberative housing development for those who don’t need subsidies. These cater to people on moderate or even higher incomes who don’t need subsidy to a ord their housing, but are looking for a nonmarketised form of housing development and access. I’m also thinking of the community land trust models, which also provide alternatives to ownership but allow people to have decent and secure housing. And, of course, the international cooperative movement, which is at the forefront of housing development in Holland and has long been part of the landscape in Germany. I know that’s been on the table in this symposium and there’s clearly a real appetite for that type of change in Australia as well.

Of course, this symposium has primarily been about design. The only takeaway I’m going to o er you is this: design, unfortunately, isn’t the solution to our housing problems in Australia. Not even lower-cost forms of construction can solve the problem while we’ve got a market-dominated approach to housing provision. Those with the most means on that market are always going to be the ones who benefit from our design innovation.

Even within social and a ordable housing, the problem in Australia is not one of poor design. In fact, some of the best design is occurring in that sector. The problem is the limited parameters within which this work takes place—for instance, the terms of the briefs that force the city to respond to a yield-maximising rather than a community-optimising scheme, that position current residents and their homes as the problem rather than the starting point—rather than working with what is there, and the extreme delicacy as described by Lacaton & Vassal and exhibited in their work.

In closing, I think that the conversations and the work done by the design community—led in this symposium by Lacaton & Vassal—serve as a very powerful critique, a radical alternative to the state of housing policy and practice in Australia. However, they also serve as a defence of modernist ideas that not only spawned a particular form of architecture and design, but which also believed very firmly in the progressive power and the obligation of the State to intervene in the market to deliver important social goods like public housing.

Thank you.

OH Thanks very much Peter John and Nicole. I’ll move on to reading the piece that has been sent to us by Future Method, who are unable to be here to present it.

We would like to acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, always was, always will be Aboriginal land. We would also like to acknowledge and warn any Indigenous members of the audience or those watching that we will be speaking of those who have passed.

We are sorry not to be with you today. We were invited to talk to you about the Future Planning Centre, a small independent community-run space we founded with the Waterloo Public Housing Action Group in 2016 (fig. 20). It was, with Jenny Monroe as co-chair, a space that sought to formalise resistance to the redevelopment of the Waterloo Housing Estate in a spatial sense and to centre Indigenous people and their voices in the ‘masterplanning’ process. The Future Planning Centre was designed to break the choreographed loop

“design, unfortunately, isn’t the solution to our housing problems in Australia.”

Nicole Gurran

Figure 20. Future Method Studio, Future Planning Centre, Waterloo.

Photograph by Joel Spring, 2017.

of ‘consultative’ frameworks that ordinarily characterise community consultation and engagement processes. It was a space that brought community together with planners, academics, politicians and counsellors. It was a space not controlled and orchestrated by government, but one that gave un-preferential advice to tenants, a space for them to voice their needs and their concerns.

We had a tea urn set up with an endless supply of Monte Carlo biscuits, comfy couches, an open library, information for tenants to keep them informed about meeting relocations and changes to the process. We had a big model of the neighbourhood made slowly by the residents as they visited, one that included their memories and stories about their neighbourhood. We ran information sessions, futuring workshops and talks. It was a vibrant little space that went some way to shifting the power balances at play in these processes.

But we cannot talk about money in this neighbourhood without remembering TJ Hickey, the 17-year-old Aboriginal boy who died on the Waterloo Housing Estate at the hands of police on 15 February 2004. We cannot talk about memory in this neighbourhood without remembering Patrick Fisher, the 31-year-old father who died in 2018 in the same place under the same conditions.

Today, we would like to speak to the ‘conditions’ we practice within here, which—as Anne Lacaton drew our attention to in her opening address on Tuesday—are critically important to us as architects. There are obvious di erences in the conditions between the settler colonial nation state we are in here and that of Europe that we would like to highlight. And we hope that a spirit of reciprocity, of two-way learning is undertaken in this three-year conversation between Lacaton & Vassal and Sydney/Warrang that this symposium is launching. At the time we were invited to take part in these talks, people were gathering all over the country to protest to stop black deaths in custody. At least 474 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in police custody and prison since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody handed down its final report in 1991. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 28% of the prison population in Australia as of 30 June 2019, while making up just over 3% of our total population. The Australian Bureau of Statistics for the same period said that Aboriginal people were jailed at 13 times the rate of non-indigenous people.

A discussion about policy must start from the struggles at the most marginal intersections because those struggles are where the worst and most compounded of hostile material conditions occur.

Following TJ Hickey’s death, the Redfern community took to the streets in protest. The Redfern riots, as they became known, were seized upon by politicians and media to entrench racist stereotyping of a violent, drug- and welfare-dependent Aboriginal community. Not coincidentally, on 17 February 2004, then Premier Bob Carr announced his intentions for the ‘Urban Renewal’ of Redfern/Waterloo and the establishment of the Redfern Waterloo Authority to oversee this process.

The relationship between policing and policy, planning policy in particular, is what we would like to speak to briefly here. The history of this dynamic, the interdependence and co-constitution of planning policy and policing,

is foundational to the formation of architecture as a discipline and is foundational to the making of the settler colonial state. We don’t have time to expand on this now, but we must as a discipline begin to grapple with it. With the reality, that the policing of public space—who is allowed to use it and for what purpose—has been instrumental in the dispossession of land, with planning policy acting as the sca old this process sits upon. The settler colonial city as we live in it today is literally made by the physical act of planning it, building it, re-storying the landscape with memorials and Western place-making practices. It is through place-making, through city-making processes that empires take place, and it is the policing of that space that still to this day makes this possible. The public nuisance laws targeted at anti-social behaviour, introduced at the same time as the Redfern Waterloo Authority was established, have worked together to make the urban renewal of this neighbourhood possible.

I think of the umbilical connection between forms of carceralism and Indigenous life both historically and today. The shift from welfare carceralism (stations and rations) to protectionist carceralism (the mission and Stolen Generations) to penal carceralism (laws that target Indigenous people and prisons) attempt to structure where and how we can exist.

So, the record and increasing number of incarcerated Aboriginal people is connected very specifically to the way space and place are managed by the dual structures of policy, planning policy and policing. The word itself, polis, from which policy and policing have their origin, translates from the Greek as the city or the state.

Essential to any system, to any structural system, for example, the law, the planning system, is that it is constituted by what sits outside of it. To explain this in the Australian context—‘innovation’ in planning policy has been determined by resistance to it. Torrens Land Title is a legal instrument designed to erase the history of land tenure and to reinforce the contested notion of terra nullius in land title instruments. Native Title, whilst a product of the High Court determination of the fiction of terra nullius, was simultaneously used to assert the sovereignty of the crown over these lands. Land right legislation in New South Wales, a long fought for means for Aboriginal self-determination, has yet to prove itself as just a means of compensation for land theft, and has instead operated as a means of containing resistance. It was planning policy that was implemented to remove the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. It was the experience of land rights legislation in the Northern Territory that informed the current restrictive land rights regime in New South Wales. It was planning reform in Redfern that has worked to remove Aboriginal people from their neighbourhood.

It is this condition of policy and policing working together that we must understand and address. If we are to have a robust and meaningful conversation about how a framework like Caring for Country might operate with Aboriginal people being central to it, then we have to consider that any planning policy reform or innovation is central and instrumental to the ongoing colonisation of their land. So, what capacity or interest do we expect the 57,000 Aboriginal people living in Sydney to have in engaging in this process?

We don’t just want to be free in the abstract. There are concrete things we want to do to get free. We don’t just dream of liberation. Our ideas have to be in contact with the structural reality that oppresses us, so that that reality becomes what we hoped for, and our hopes become the new reality. The only way to fulfill this transformation is through action. But that action has to be conscious of what exactly we are fighting against and what is the most liberating thing to be fighting for. Radical conscience does not come from nowhere. Some people might try to fight against the wrong thing. Some people might try to fight for the wrong thing.

We are speaking to you today with our teachers and leaders, those we are accountable to, front and centre in our minds. They are Joel’s Wiradjuri family and Ancestors and Elders. It is the Gadigal community of Aunty Rhonda Dixon and Nadeena Dixon, our Gamilaroi and Wiradjuri leaders Lorna Munro and Aunty Jenny Munro, our dear friend Yuin woman Linda Kennedy, the amazing women at Redfern’s Mudgingal Women’s Council, Aunty Bronwyn Penrith, Aunty Ashley Donohue, GMAR’s Helen Eason. There is so much beauty in these people and their spirit, thinking and practice that we acknowledge. Lastly, we’d like us all to think about the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunties, children, partners of those who have died in police custody. May we make our cities safe for them.

OH

Thank you. That was reading from Future Method, Joel and Genevieve, who are unable to be here today. I’ll get Peter John and Nicole to jump up on stage. We are actually nearly at time, but we do probably have time for a few questions, which would be fantastic. Thank you both.

I’m keen after those presentations to have a moment to reflect on what we can do. I was busy scribbling here, but it did strike me that a lot of the examples that we’ve seen over the last two days do involve architects moving outside of the sphere that they normally operate in and, perhaps, into some of these spaces like financing and so on. I was wondering if you could both, in your di erent ways, start by reflecting on the space to which we as architects can contribute—without starting with the premise that we first have to turn the Queen Mary. Because we are all here, I think many of us are involved in this area and want to do the best work that we possibly can. Peter John, could I pass to you to start with that one?

PJC

I think the first thing to do is to acknowledge that architecture is a weak practice because we’re at the bequest and behold of our clients—we act through others. The second thing is not to be discouraged by the fact that it’s a weak practice, but to take courage from that, because that gives us a point from which to move and expand, and a place to ask critical questions and to work hard. It also makes us a discipline that can collaborate, seek advice from others, and move that advice into a kind of reality. That’s the way I always work, by finding the best possible people to work with and work as closely as possible with them. In this project, for example, I’ve worked with hundreds of people and all of them have contributed vastly to the wealth of understanding and the positioning of the project. It is an extraordinary privilege to be in a position to be able to draw together these things. They’re drawn together by the fact that there is a project and there are actors in that project and that architects can illustrate and help people imagine what future reality is possible or could be possible. It seems contradictory—we’re weak, but actually we can be at the centre. We’re weak, but actually that weakness gives us a position of strength. That’s my answer, based on my own experience. It may not be everyone’s answer.

OH

Thanks, Peter John. Nicole, have you got any thoughts on that one?

NG

The main power, as Peter John says, is one of demonstrating and imagining and showing an alternative. I think that’s immensely powerful. The second thing that I find very important— just as a practising planner, when I am in practice—is that the architects, whoever their client or whatever context that they’re working in, actually do take the kind of place-based, person-based approach to their practice. They think about the quality of each dwelling, whatever given parameters they’re working within, as well as the intersection of that dwelling or that development with the community and with the space that it’s moving into. That’s not structural, it’s not changing the world, but it is improving the place and improving the quality of life for residents, which is really important. I think that symbolic construction of an alternative, the imaginative power of potential alternative models, is really powerful.

PJC

To echo what Nicole says, always what you’re doing in architecture is reforming places for people to dwell in. That’s at the basis of our practice. The closer you can be to the future inhabitants of your work, the better your work will be. Of course, generally speaking, we don’t know those future inhabitants, because good works of architecture last a long time, beyond our lives and beyond the lives of those who are involved in making them now. What you have to harness, what you need to understand, is the long-term project of the city, of making the city both as physical space but also as a space that represents the city itself and represents values. There are choices to be made in values. Are you choosing a city that is open and public and for everyone, or are you choosing a city that is precious and privileged and for a few? That’s a choice we all need to make every day in every moment of our practice. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but I know that every time I sit down at my desk or stand up in front of people or sit down at my computer, that’s actually what’s happening, I’m making those choices. Despite the inability for architects to make change, real change—in society, I think we have a great opportunity to project these things.

OH

Thanks, Peter John. That was great. Any questions from people in the audience today?

AQ1

My question pertains to an idea that was just raised, that the idea needs to come into contact. I’m a second-year undergraduate student here at the University of Sydney and in our architectural studies, I do realise that the majority of our work is based in the hypothetical. Our studio work is based in a hypothetical sense, so it’s not actually going to be constructed. But, if we, through our education, want to become engaged in these real, current issues, how do we do so? Are there any mechanisms that we can engage in in a non-tokenistic way to a ord these kinds of realities within our designs, anything that people who aren’t actively out in practice can do to better inform ourselves for when we do end up there?

OH Good question.

PJC

The time you have as a student is your most important time, because that’s where you have space to think and to experiment and not to be infected by reality. As a student, you should be looking at the hypothetical questions put in front of you and strive to bring

reality to them. I can tell you that, when you’re in practice, it is virtually impossible to make the time to think. Every second of my day is occupied by questions and demands and requirements. If I didn’t have that time to think early in my life, putting that into a place would be really, really di cult. I’d be overcome, I’d be, ‘This is too much for me, I can’t take it anymore’. But because I’ve had that background, I’ve had time to think, I find that I thrive in that environment. It gives me a place to implement those thoughts that I had long ago. So, take time to understand the world, before you have to go out and act in it. You’ll find, it’s so easy to make mistakes when you’re in the world. It’s easy to go wrong and it’s di cult to find a good path. So, it’s a precious time, this time as a student, very precious.

OH

Did you have anything to add to that, Nicole?

NG

Only that a lot of architecture students who start with that question, end up doing planning. Not that planning, you know, is an unproblematic career—and hats o to Future Method for pulling out some of the problems with the planning system. Architects play a really, really important role as architects not within architecture but throughout the city and in the community sector as well as in industry. There are a lot of wide contexts in which you could work. You could certainly start doing that as a student with any of the community-based organisations, for instance, that deal with housing—if housing is one of the things that interests you.

AQ2

Nicole, you said there was a turning point in the 1990s, where we were swamped by neoliberal ideology and the amount…

NG

Of course, it started before then.

AQ2

It started before then, but it really took o here and we went from 10% low-cost housing to 1%. Peter John, you were saying that architects do have some power in our own weak way through the visual image, which gives us an ability to build utopian worlds and model utopian worlds, which can be very persuasive. I just wondered if, at the same period of time that Nicole spoke about, you saw a change in the way that architects locally dreamt. Did they give up on utopia? Having been in Canberra recently, it certainly seems to have been the case there—they had a wonderful utopian moment and it’s just gone. I wondered if you had any comments on what happened in the 1990s.

PJC

You’re asking the wrong person that question. Because the utopian project is a failed project and it’s been a failed project from its beginning, many centuries ago. I place no store in the utopian project. My only interest is in reality, in real life. That’s what I’m interested in. Another way of answering this is in relation to the political and social and cultural construct of the people that we serve as architects. Obviously, we’re tossed about on the waves. So, when things change, we’re tossed about with the changes. The way we can act also has to change in relation to that. So, yes, it’s noticeable. Actually, neoliberalism is a movement that goes back a long time and has ebbed and flowed. I think there’s nothing new, actually. I don’t find anything new in these things, in these challenges.

If I could just comment that Matthew Bennett, were he able to attend, was going to present a project, which would have been a really good illustration of your point about real life, how we work and can still work really positively in these settings. Nicole, to that question?

NG

I think that’s a great question, but it’s probably one that everyone in this room would have a position on. We could discuss it for ages. The ‘90s was also the time when we stopped building public housing, when our premier Bob Carr was o ended by the design quality of residential flats. We also had the introduction of the residential design quality State Environmental Planning Policy, otherwise known as SEPP 65. As a design moment, it was a point in time where there was a commitment to reform regulations to improve the living quality of apartments. So, I think we’ve had design moving along. Did it allow innovative design? Talk about that cat amongst the pigeons! That’s a topic that architects can debate forever. Was that policy just committed to improving the quality of life for people living in apartments, which was a new thing for Australians? Yes, it was, but it was not accompanied by any commitment to making sure that decent apartments were a ordable or available for low- and moderate-income earners. We can see that parallel. Design can continue and can continue to inspire, but we need to get the economics—it might be a dirty word—but we need to get the policy right to make sure that we have a decent standard of housing, which to my mind is utopia, Peter John. Utopia is actually a decent standard of secure housing for everyone, and it shouldn’t be out of reach. That’s almost independent, actually, of design.

PJC

Yes and no. Everyone really does have the right to live well and to have a home, I think. I think it’s a kind of right.

NG

It’s not a right in Australia.

PJC

No. It’s not a right that’s provided for in Australia, or that’s even articulated as such, in the general sense. But thinking back to last night’s presentation, it is a kind of right to have a good home, and too many people don’t have a good home. There are just too many people. But, relatively speaking, in other places, even more people don’t have a good home. There are other times and other places where we’re closer to that, and where we’re further away. That’s why I don’t really consider it utopian. I think the challenge is to make it the reality and to always be striving to make that the case.

The other thing is that the sorts of questions in the ‘90s were not unlike the questions at the end of the 19th century, when too many people didn’t have a ordable housing, where the quality of housing was very poor, where design was made to change. The same things are being debated today. Should every room have a window? was the big debate in the 1880s in New York. Even in the 1920s in Australia, that was a topic of debate and there was a Royal Commission in Victoria, which addressed it. we’re still talking about it today. There are some jurisdictions in Australia where it doesn’t matter if a bedroom doesn’t have a window. I think, at every opportunity, we’ve got to strive to make things better. That’s all. But we have to do it in a way that’s real. We have to achieve that, not simply think about it.

OH

I must say in the work that we do, it’s always about trying to get things a little bit better. It’s very rarely in the space of utopia. But I think there’s huge value in that incremental change. Your point about the role that you can play as a facilitator to many parties coming together

who may have very di erent drivers—be they political or economic—and making that case of what’s possible through illustration is super important.

NG

Olivia, can I just make one final observation. We are often told that we can’t a ord good design, or that expecting or requiring good design is actually the problem, when it comes to housing a ordability—almost as though those two things are at odds. That is absolutely not the case. Because of the way that the housing market has financialised housing, that’s happening irrespective of whether there’s a window in the bedroom or not. If that real estate is valuable because of where it is and because of its investment potential, it’s going to cost a lot of money. Therefore, I want to encourage all the architects and designers at the front line—you’re not the problem if you’re trying to insist on decent design and decent housing in your work.

OH

I suppose, too, that—in terms of what is good housing, what is good design, what I see in the work that we’re doing and where we sit—there is a shift, a very clear shift, back towards understanding that there is such a thing as good design and that it has value and a place. In establishing mechanisms to evaluate good design—not as gold taps but as the minimum that we should be expecting and requiring. I think, that’s really positive.

NG I agree.

OH Any last questions?

AQ3

I’ve recently been back to Australia after living away for nearly two decades. What my partner and I have noticed as we spend our weekends going around the city is that there’s so many more big developments from the 1990s by companies like Mirvac in the city and also in the suburbs. They’re quite bland, to be honest, and they all look pretty much the same. In inner city suburbs, in Waterloo, in Green Square, you’ve got these huge blocks of identical buildings with quite minor di erentiation. I was just wondering, how supportive is the State government in pushing for experimentation? In comparison to, say, countries like Holland, where we used to live, you saw nearly two decades ago ‘60s apartment blocks being redone in terms of the interior layout, in the façade. They didn’t only experiment in the design, but also in having mixed occupancy of, say, elderly people with students. The whole structure of having housing associations working together with government, I think, really pushed the whole design attitude towards housing. My partner was working on a project where the client wanted to design a building that would last for a hundred years, and it was very supported by the government. It was three huge blocks. They worked with Arup to create the whole [inaudible] and structure that would encourage change. Because buildings change, and the way people live changes within decades or a century. How is the State government here, how supportive are they for experimentations and funding to do this? NG

I might just make a really quick response, because I know we’re at time. You’ve perfectly articulated the potential role of the non-profit housing sector in the housing system, a non-profit and limited profit role. That is what explains the di erence between what you observe on the streets in Amsterdam and the new developments on the streets

“There’s obviously a design response but, to my mind, it just shows the importance of building a social and non-profit housing sector.”

Nicole Gurran

in Holland. That is what explains the di erence between innovative design, people-oriented, community-oriented designs in Holland versus the up-zoning and real estate-oriented development—say, around railway stations—that you will see in Sydney. It is really just this commitment to—and a history of—a social housing sector being a very big part of the housing system. It’s the kind of development outcomes that you can get. There’s obviously a design response but, to my mind, it just shows the importance of building a social and non-profit housing sector.

OH

Peter John, can we talk about some of the things the City is doing in that space?

PJC

No, I think Nicole’s answer is the right answer.

OH

Thank you everyone for attending today. Thank you very much to our speakers, Nicole and Peter John, and also to Future Method, Joel and Genevieve, who I hope are listening online, at least, and to everyone who attended today. Thank you very much.

Peter John Cantrill is Urban Design Program Manager in Strategic Planning and Urban Design at the City of Sydney where he leads the City’s alternate approach to the remaking of Waterloo housing estate. He is the author of Public Sydney—drawing the city with Philip Thalis and has won State, National and International awards in architecture, planning and landscape architecture including the 2009 AIA NSW Presidents Prize for outstanding contribution to the profession.

Nicole Gurran is an urban planner and policy analyst whose research focuses on comparative urban planning systems and approaches to housing and ecological sustainability. As Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, ADP, Nicole has led and collaborated on a series of research projects on aspects of urban policy, housing, sustainability and planning, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Australian Urban and Housing Research Institute (AHURI), as well as state and local government. Recent research has included AHURI Inquiries on a ordable housing supply (2016-21).

Directed by Wiradjuri interdisciplinary artist Joel Sherwood-Spring and white settler Genevieve Zoe Murray, Future Method Studio works collaboratively on projects that sit outside established notions of contemporary art & architecture attempting to transfigure spatial dynamics of power through discourse, political activism, peda-gogies, art, design and architectural practice. The studio is focussed on examining the contested narratives of Australia’s urban cultural and indigenous history in the face of ongoing colonisation.

Editorial note

Transcripts of the 2021 Rothwell Chair Symposium | Lacaton & Vassal

Living in the City: Exemplary Social and A ordable Housing Design

Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning

Transcript Session 4

New Propositions, Questioning Politics, Planning and Policy

Edited by Maren Koehler and Catherine Lassen

Rothwell Co-Chairs: Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal

Rothwell Coordinator and Symposium Co-Curator: Catherine Lassen

Architectural Chair Project Manager: Sue Lalor

Design: Adrian Thai

Editorial Assistance: Sophie Lanigan

Copyeditor: Cherry Russell

ISBN: 978-0-6455400-3-1

Lacaton & Vassal and the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning

Rothwell Chair Symposium, April 27–29, 2021

Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney & online

Published by the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney, 2023.

Copyright: Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning. Copyright of the content of individual contributions remains the property of the named speakers (authors). Other than for fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and Copyright Amendment Act 2006, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of the editor, publisher and author/s.

The Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce the copyright material in this publication. Every e ort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission. The Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning would appreciate notification of errors or omissions that will be corrected in future versions of this publication. Electronic versions of all five session transcripts are available for download: https:// rothwell-chair.sydney.edu.au/events/lacaton-vassal-rothwell-chair-symposium-2021/

We gratefully acknowledge all the named speakers (authors) and Symposium organisers for their contributions to this publication. The Rothwell Chair Symposium and recorded transcripts have been made possible by a gift from Garry and Susan Rothwell, which established the Rothwell Chair in Architectural Design Leadership at the University of Sydney. We wish to thank them for their generosity.

Acknowledging the diverse contributions to the Symposium, which at times varied in style, the editorial process aimed for a readable version, while still capturing the voice of the speaker. The guiding principle in this process of translation from spoken to written word was to make minimal interventions to retain meaning and conversational tone, while ensuring text flow. A final copyediting process and editorial review in consultation with the main speakers of the Symposium resulted in the document at hand. The visual material comprises a selection of images that were presented at the Symposium. Supplementary details, further readings and cross references to the respective parts in the video recording have been added in the notes.

Cover photograph: Future Method Studio, Future Planning Centre, Waterloo. Photograph by Joel Spring, 2017.