FUTURE WEST 02 Desire for Density

[AUSTRALIAN URBANISM]

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investigates urban density by looking at how people can live together. What experiments can influence a desire for density in Perth and Western Australia?

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DESIRE FOR DENSITY

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In the race to create denser cities, suburbs and towns across Western Australia and beyond, housing targets are set, new building typologies are developed, growth boundaries are redrawn.

The determination of the physical shape of a city, of what a compact urbanism looks like and where more dwellings may go, is only one part of the challenge. Density is not just about how many more townhouses and apartments can fit on a block of land. Density is about how (many) people occupy space and what they are doing there.

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With this shift towards denser cities, many people have become anxious about how living more closely together will impact upon their individual amenity. This issue of Future West (Australian Urbanism) argues the case for a close-knit urbanism by illuminating how density can be desirable. It looks at how changing living and work patterns impact upon the built environment, and how financial pressures and lifestyle aspirations influence the spaces one resides within.

What forms of urban experimentation can influence the future city? Can they inspire a change in attitudes towards urban densification?

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OPINIONS

8 THE SPRAWL AND THE CITY Anthony Duckworth-Smith

Six great things about living in the sprawl, and what they mean for design of the compact city.

14 COME TOGETHER Nic Temov If urban planners, developers and local citizens engage on driving density, they might just find there's a lot of common ground.

20 SELF MADE CITY Kristien Ring Citizens can go from consumer to pioneer by driving new designs for living. The German baugruppe model is one leading example.

30 OWNER OCCUPIED Kristien Ring interviewed

by Geoffrey London Kristien Ring speaks about the German phenomenon of apartment-building design and development driven by citizens.

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38 LIVE AND WORK Andréanne Doyon Changes in how we live and work call into question current regulations around mixeduse development.

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44 T HE SECOND DOMESTIC REVOLUTION Timothy Moore With apartment sizes decreasing, corporatised models of co-living are emerging.

50 BENDING THE RULES Jennie Officer Exceptional architectural projects can emerge when regulations are loosened due to context.

56 P RESERVING SPACE IN THE SUBURBS Stuart Harrison A suburban estate in Thornlie highlights the importance of maintaining public space in the face of greater densification.

62 T WO STEPS FORWARD, ONE SETBACK Grace Mortlock and David Neustein The front yards, footpaths and verges of Australian suburbs are overdue for reinvention.

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‘I wouldn’t live there if you paid me,’ declared rock band Talking Heads in ‘The Big Country’, its unambiguous lament about the ever-expanding suburban frontier. However, in Perth, they have been actively choosing the ’burbs – the majority of new homes in the city continue to be built in new suburbs, even as planners and academics rue their popularity.

The push to overcome sprawl and design a more compact city is founded in assumptions that tend to ignore the charms of the suburbs.

Infill advocates, in particular, typically cite the need for new homes to have proximity to public transport networks and their congested surroundings.

This, however, seems a big ask for those looking to partake in the ‘good life’ with which Perth is synonymous.

So, how can residential infill acknowledge and capture some of the fundamental qualities that attract so many people to the suburbs?

Because without it the idea of Perth as a compact city may be doomed.

The following six points, based on findings published in my book Sprawl and the City: Combining the qualities of suburban and urban living to create better residential infill (UWA Publishing, 2016), highlight some of the qualities found in new suburbs and how they could be transferred to compact city living in order to inspire more suburban-minded households to embrace living closer together.

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1. IT’S AWESOME VALUE!

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In the sprawl you get a square metre of floor space for a quarter of the price of an inner-city apartment. That’s a lot of bang for your buck, plus you get to own your very own piece of good old terra firma.

How can we reduce the cost of higher-density construction? It’s complex and energy intensive. Perhaps we should further enable low-rise, mediumdensity urban infill that uses ‘cottage’ and modular construction techniques that don’t require excavation, sprinklers and highrisk development.

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THE AIR IS SO MUCH CLEANER! In the sprawl the air quality is, on average, five times cleaner than that in a congested inner-city location. Wasn’t this the reason for getting out of inner-city areas all those years ago?

Street trees can do a good job of filtering pollutants, but it’s not enough if your dwelling depends on airflow from a trafficked environment. We could regulate apartment design in these locations to respond to this or simply distribute new dwellings away from them.

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IT CAN BE SO PRODUCTIVE!

Want a safe and secure backyard so that you can easily set up the playpen, kick a ball or get a dog? Then the sprawl has the best offer around: on average ten times the space of your innercity balcony!

The desire for a private ‘piece of turf’ is pretty strong.

Larger communal areas integrated into higher-density buildings may work for some, but a nicely dimensioned private courtyard in low-rise infill seems even better.

Not only can you grow around half of your annual veggie and fruit needs, but you can generate four times your electricity demand and sequester some of your carbon emissions to boot.

Communal gardens are a great alternative, but there’s nothing like your own stash if your recipe demands it and you’re close to the stove. You could grow your own in a courtyard, or maybe duck out to the verge if you live in low-rise infill.

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BACKYARDS ARE BLISS!

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5. THE DOCTOR IS IN!

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The sea breeze is one of our most pleasant natural phenomena. If you live in the inner city and can’t open your windows because of noise and pollution, or you’re facing the wrong way, then you’re missing out big time!

It’s easier to capture the breeze if you have cross-flow ventilation options, but then in a busy location you may be admitting nasty particulates as well.

Clever design can partially overcome this problem, but it’s better to be in a location where you can easily open up.

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IT’S SO MUCH QUIETER! In the sprawl the average background night-time noise levels are about half those of the inner city. If you want to de-stress and get a good night’s sleep, then this is the place for you.

It’s a fact that roads and traffic are the biggest noise sources in urban residential environments. A well-designed apartment could help reduce the impact of noise, but distance from the source is the best insurance.

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With research and clever design it may be possible to make high-density urban infill options adjacent to transport attractive and enduring enough to draw the punters in and keep them happy and healthy. But this seems like loading complexity upon complexity.

Sprawl and the City suggests that the ability to make Perth a compact city lies with enabling a smartly designed low-rise infill model across well-located existing suburbs. Such a model could deliver the best of both worlds, capturing the essential qualities of the popular suburban ‘product’ within an infill location. It’s a model with great promise if the goal is to arrest urban sprawl, yet one whose possibilities remain largely untested.

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Perth's urban sprawl. Image: flickr/perthhdproductions

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Urban planners and designers are working to curb Perth’s sprawling ways, to create a more connected, productive and cost-efficient city.

Logic, facts and statistics tell us that there are considerable environmental and economic risks if we don't.

To meet this challenge, industry is developing denser housing types and governments are formulating planning policies and processes to further encourage this type of housing. However, the outcomes are variable. The discussion around this transition plays out in most local newspapers, where the rationale for infill meets local outrage and pushback. Communities and elected members can be apprehensive at best, and professionals are frustrated by the sluggishness of the move away from Perth’s traditional suburban culture.

The challenge of achieving community buy-in is a complex one, so efforts to communicate and engage when working through new plans for Perth’s established areas must be authentic and relevant. There are several ideas that towns and cities in Western Australia can explore in order to achieve better relationships between professionals and citizens.

One idea is to take consultation out of the town hall and into local areas, so everyone can engage and be heard. Jane’s Walks, named after the late urban activist Jane Jacobs, are free, locally led walking tours in Perth and hundreds of cities around the world. They work on a simple concept: get people out of their houses to learn about and contribute to the shared story of that place. When you turn up to a walk you notice the hierarchies of a formal workshop are virtually non-existent – there’s no government official talking at you about your own neighbourhood.

Walking is said to help boost creativity. On Jane’s Walks, walk leaders take locals through backyard veggie patches and past heritage gems, to modern apartments and the local train station, and at any time citizens can add their insights and suggest ways to improve the place.

They may offer thoughts on pedestrian improvements, public art or housing opportunities.

This ‘walkshop’ concept can be broadened to allow locals to become involved in helping to solve problems – like ‘maintaining neighbourhood character while achieving infill’ or ‘ageing in place’ – and weigh up difficult, often conflicting, choices. Ideas are usually captured through journalling, sketching and photography. This year the Perth

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→ In 2016, Jane’s Walk Perth held three days of walks: in Bayswater, Daglish and Perth’s CBD. The walks explored the themes of heritage, art, sustainability and urban design.

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Citizens come together to discuss their neighbourhood as part of Jane's Walk Perth. Image: Nic Temov

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walks ran in eight local areas and attracted over 300 locals, who offered rich feedback based on personal experiences.

Getting locals out and about can be coupled with other communication tools, like visual policy documents that can help translate planning language into terms the layperson can understand and which, importantly, help them to contribute. If planning isn’t accessible, we don't hear from those who live on the margins of our communities. As a result, the young, old, migrant households, students and transient populations are usually underrepresented.

The Center for Urban Pedagogy in Brooklyn, USA, is finding new ways to reach out to such groups through its Making Policy Public project. The idea is to explore and explain public policy through well-designed foldout posters, rather than relying on text. The Center pairs advocacy groups and governments (usually the policy’s owners) with graphic designers through a competitive process that targets communities that will benefit from clear communication.

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The Center for Urban Pedagogy created the 'What is Zoning?' pamphlet so citizens can understand how zoning affects their neighbourhood.

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Successful past examples include ‘What is Zoning?’ and ‘What is Affordable Housing?’ – two visual policies that come with resource kits that can act as standalone guides or be used in community consultation and schools.

The Center also developed the collateral ‘How Can I Improve My Park?’, an initiative to show New Yorkers how to turn common complaints into proactive campaigns for public space upgrades and take greater ownership of maintenance issues. ‘Why is Chinatown Getting So Expensive?’, another communication piece, explained the city’s Rent Stabilization Law through iconography and multilingual translation.

‘Localism’, a term that refers to communities showing interest in the way their neighbourhoods develop, has helped to improve community buy-in to local planning. In the UK citizens are now able to lead the preparation of Neighbourhood Plans (in WA there are similar plans called Structure Plans) under the UK Localism Act. Citizen groups, using local government technical resources and funding, can draw up their own plan provided it’s in line with national planning policies and the strategic vision set by local government. One of the main requirements is that the plan must accept (or exceed) pre-set housing density targets.

Once a plan is produced and a simple majority reached through referendum, the local authority will bring the plan into force.

The UK government recently declared that over the last five years 200 Neighbourhood Plans have been prepared and are legally in force. Supporters suggest the plans successfully devolve power to everyday citizens, allowing them to have genuine opportunities to demonstrate innovation, influence the places that they live in and share responsibility for housing targets. Many developers back the concept as it brings about difficult conversations about housing densities that would otherwise have waited until their proposal was being assessed.

However, there are critics. Some commentators suggest the plans have put the brakes on housing projects in some areas, are difficult to apply in large cities where greater strategic planning is required, and act as a cover for meaningful community influence without stronger devolution of funding and taxation control to match the potential of the Localism Act. When professionals dedicate the time to properly engage the people they are planning for it can close the communication gap and transform potential protesters into true advocates of change. Citizens who understand the inevitable trade-offs involved with infill developments help reduce risks and add valuable insights that contribute to building a better city.

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Today, the housing markets of most major cities are shaped by profit-driven developments. However, there exist new models that offer increased choice and lower costs, and which foster cohesive neighbourhoods and enable adaptable, customised living solutions.

These alternatives have been diverse and of a high architectural standard. They have also allowed self-determination: they are initiated by the people who will dwell in them.

Baugruppen – German for ‘building group’ – stands for a long tradition of self-initiated, community-oriented living, and the shared responsibility of building. The concept has taken off in Berlin. There is no ‘typical’ model – every project differs in its financing, social make-up, the wishes and desires of the group, and the project’s resulting architectural and urban qualities.

The most significant and innovative built examples, particularly in Berlin, have been initiated by architects for a specific group of clients who were all looking to live in the buildings. On the surface, these are practical solutions, where single-family homes are stacked and

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The apartment layouts at R50 – Cohousing (initiated by ifau und Jesko Fezer with Heide & Von Beckerath) are highly individualised to meet each family’s needs and desires. Moveable walls add adaptability.

Image: Andrea Kroth

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combined to optimise the use of an urban site. But on closer inspection, it is clear that the close collaboration between the architects and the clients has resulted in projects packed with special features and spaces that foster social interaction.

Baugruppe adds to urban vitality by considering social issues of inclusion and community, and by incorporating mixed-use elements that fuel urban interaction. Green, open and community spaces have proven vital parts of good neighborhoods, and they are also important here. Common spaces such as rooftop terraces, function rooms, playrooms, guest rooms and even saunas also help to bring people together.

Families at Big Yard, designed by Zanderroth Architekten, share a courtyard garden along with a sauna and guest apartment. Image: Simon Menges

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Every baugruppe project in Berlin has a shared garden that is often also open to the public. The entire neighborhood profits from the green and surrounding urban spaces. The experience helps foster a sense of community identity and encourages people to take responsibility for the place they live in.

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Public access at Spreefeld Berlin is created with permeable solitary blocks that extend through to the Spree river. Image: Andrea Kroth

Long-term affordability helps to create stable neighborhoods. In collective projects, the future users decide what to invest in and where money can be best saved, redefining the quality-to-price relationship.

Alternative models for financing and ownership have offered a new level of long-term affordability within a non-profit ideology.

One example of this is the co-op association Spreefeld. This project diverges from the traditional owner-occupier baugruppe model: here, a land grant or a leasehold contract guarantees the long-term use of land in return for rent, but also ensures that what is built and established there meets certain criteria and ideals.

Personalised solutions, and spaces that can be adapted to suit changing needs over time, allow people with special needs to find a place in the city; for example, these spaces can allow multi-generation living, barrier-free standards or an environmentally aware way of

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→ Spreefeld Berlin is a building and housing association with approximately 60 members. It has a statute that guides its development, which includes enshrining the equal rights of its residents.

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life. The Strelitzerstrasse 53 project, on which architect Florian Koehl worked closely with the owner group, includes fold-out balconies, as city planning regulations prohibit real ones. This design decision inspired many other baugruppen to try new ideas. Such projects show the architect’s role expanding from that of designer to that of initiator, developer, moderator of engagement processes and project manager.

Baugruppe projects are leading the way in environmental sustainability by employing, for example, high-rise timber construction or passive design. Users and owners willingly explore new technology, carefully balancing its pros and cons. Several different types of multi-storey wooden construction solutions are now certified in Germany as a result of baugruppe experimentation.

It is time that our cities are determined by the people who live in them, and that high-quality solutions that contribute to the surrounding communities become standard. However, this requires such solutions being valued by the architectural profession, as well as by policy makers.

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Communal spaces – including playrooms, office space, terraces and a club space for teenagers – feature throughout Spreefeld Berlin.

Image: Andrea Kroth

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Left and above: At Urbane Living 01, Abcarius and Burns Architecture Design circumvent the prohibition of balconies by creating an operable facade. The layered facade mediates between the street and living spaces. Images: Andrea Kroth

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Often, the largest challenge for groups is buying a site; specifically, getting the loan organised quickly enough so that they beat other investors to the table. Governments could allow payment on a site to be deferred until the groups are fully formed and planning approval is gained.

By designating public land for development, the social, cultural and urban planning goals of the city can be realised through private initiatives and long-term self-administration. Goals such as social mix, mixed use, environmental standards or non-profit constraints can all be regulated within land allocation policies. England, Finland and many other countries are reestablishing policy in order to facilitate baugruppe building.

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Baugruppen can help cities face the challenge of providing an adequate amount of suitable, affordable housing and planning that meets our growing sustainability challenges. By transforming themselves from consumers into pioneers, the people that make up the collectives have succeeded in developing projects that allow a high quality of life, give added value to the community, and provide longterm affordability.

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Above: Linienstrasse 23 by BCO Architekten responds to context with twisting windows that frame the street. Image: Werner Huthmacher Right: Balconies become backyards at 3xGruen, by Atelier Pk, RoedigSchop and Rozynski-Sturm Architects. Image: Stefan Mueller

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Geoffrey London: There are many models of building and living collectively, such as co-housing and baugruppen. Can you define these models?

Kristien Ring: Co-housing, as far as it is understood in Europe and the United States, has a long history. It is not only about living in the same building. The act of sharing spaces, meals, routines or chores defines a co-housing project as a community. Sometimes they operate on an ownership-based model, sometimes they are associations.

Baugruppen [German for ‘building group’] is an ownership-based model, but it’s pragmatic. The development is design driven, and co-initiated and co-created by an architect, together with future users. People come together in order to create their own homes, but they do this as a group on more urban sites. They buy the site together, contract the building together and share facilities, but they don’t necessarily share meals.

Often they decide at the beginning what they would like to share.

What was it in Berlin, in particular, that prompted people to adopt this model?

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People were not finding apartments on the market that suited their needs or tastes. For example, there were young families that didn’t want to move outside of the city. They were looking to keep their urban way of life, but needed to expand. People were also looking for apartments that could adapt to changing ways of life in the future, so as to avoid the need to move, and they wanted to be surrounded by good neighbours. At the same time, there was a slow market. Many architects in need of commissions recognised potential in this set of circumstances. Architects did designs for available building sites and found many people with similar needs keen to get together to build. At first we thought of it as a stacking of single-family homes.

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Rooftop terraces act as private backyards at Big Yard, designed by Zanderroth Architekten. Image: Simon Menges

To what extent is amenity shared in baugruppen?

When it first started they shared very little. But now, through this process, they have become more accustomed to the idea of sharing more with each other. The more pragmatic view is that the people have their own apartments, and that’s the centre of their life, but they also share things that make their life in the city better, such as common spaces where children can play in the afternoon. When the kids grow up, they use spaces for different purposes.

How effectively has the concept of baugruppen evolved in cities outside Berlin?

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Other German cities, such as Hamburg, Freiburg and Tübingen, have seen the benefit of this model in redeveloping brownfield sites, and often see baugruppen communities as an incubator as they display so much initiative in terms of ecological and sustainable building, and they have social benefits. Because the group already knows each other well before they move in, you get an instant close-knit neighbourhood.

These cities require at least 40 per cent of their sites to be developed this way and support them by reserving land (at market prices).

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Relative to conventional apartment delivery, what advantages are there as a result of the baugruppen process?

The built architectural quality of these projects can exceed that of anything else on the market. They also have an emphasis on green spaces. They activate the street frontage with mixed use. They build to a really high quality at affordable prices. It’s amazing how much the groups save by being their own investor. The projects cost about 20 per cent less than what’s offered in the developer-delivered marketplace.

They don’t need an external organisational structure to manage the building [for example]. There’s a greater trust. There’s a greater willingness to share than in a place with fewer owner-occupiers, because they’ve got to know each other in the process.

This emerged from a pragmatic desire to get a better product rather than from a utopian desire to share?

That’s right. It’s just common sense. [Laughs].

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Big Yard is a baugruppe with 9,210 square meters of 45 high-amenity, family-sized units achieved at a cost of €2,280 per square metre.

Image: Simon Menges

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Left: At Big Yard, the insertion of the apartment building completes the typical urban block.

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Below: Communal spaces, such as terraces, balconies and courtyards, are made prominent.

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How many projects are there in Berlin that demonstrate these outcomes?

Over the last twelve years over 400 projects have been built with well over 5,000 apartments.

In Berlin how have the more traditional developers responded to the baugruppen model?

They were sceptical at first, and then they saw it working. They realised they need to embrace it, and offer something similar. They were surprised because owner-occupiers came with huge demands. They wanted regular meetings – the developers were unprepared for this system. It’s time consuming. In that way they gave it up. They realised their model is something different. It’s healthy to have diversification of the market. And it’s not eating into their profits. It’s for people who wouldn’t be able to buy on the market and wouldn’t necessarily want to.

Is there a role for developers in the delivery of baugruppen?

Potentially. The developer could be an investor that secures the land and sells it to baugruppen, or they can lease the land, which reduces the initial cost of investment. A traditional developer could also provide project management services.

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The shared internal courtyard at Big Yard. Image: Simon Menges

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What role do you see for government in assisting the formation of baugruppen?

They need to recognise the potential of it as an incubator or a catalyst within new developments and make land available for baugruppen projects. Government can also help in the facilitation of baugruppen by having a place where people can gather, such as a website, so people can learn more about it and register interest if they want to. The website could inform people of differences in the various models so people understand the alternatives on the market. A demonstration project would also show people what’s possible. They could even support a third party that consults with baugruppen, such as in Berlin where the government is not sanctioned to officially consult itself.

In Berlin was there any need to change regulatory requirements to allow for baugruppen to develop?

No, there were no changes needed. Banks also found that it was quite simple, because the only pragmatic way is to give each party their own loan and, in that way, finance the whole group. In the end they pay stamp duty twice. This is quite a large sum, so it would be advantageous if that could be avoided.

From what you have seen, what opportunities are there for this model to work in Western Australia?

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I think there is a huge opportunity not only in more urban situations, but also in the situation you have of densifying the suburbs. This would be much better done by people coming together to make their own decisions rather than selling to a developer, who just squishes in three badly done units. There’s huge potential there for people to take it into their own hands, and go in together with neighbours. In doing so, they could create a situation where they can live there too, which could be both rewarding and lucrative — particularly for the idea of aging in place. It’s often hard to imagine how a site or space could be used.

Baugruppen brings in people with a lot of ideas about how they want the urban environment to be, and working together with architects helps get excellent design solutions. People make entirely different decisions when they are going to live there themselves.

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Am Friedrichshain by Zoom Architekten Image: Leo Ritz.

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Since the beginning of the twentieth century the single-function building typology – for example the office, school, apartment, institution or retail complex – has been subject to regulations stipulating that there must be separate spaces for ‘working’ and ‘living’. Within this framework, paid labour seldom took place inside the home. Today, people use space differently, and legislation must change to support different ways of living and working in the one building. These days, for many of us, work is no longer separate from our broader lives.

The post-industrial city, which has existed since the later part of the last century, has changed the way people live and work. In North America, with the decline of the manufacturing sector in many cities and the ‘discovery’ of the inner city by the 1970s, it became fashionable for people to live in former manufacturing spaces that had been converted for residential use. This trend emerged in New York and then in San Francisco a decade later, and by the 1990s most cities in North America boasted converted loft districts where people were, potentially, both living and working. The early adopters of the contemporary live/ work movement were artists and craftspeople.

Another group that has since taken advantage of live/work dwellings are entrepreneurs and the self-employed. They may be freelancers who do not keep regular office hours or need permanent office space.

The availability and affordability of computers, advances in telecommunications and tax deductions for home offices have made the live/work option a practical and economically savvy alternative for many.

When the contemporary live/work movement gained traction in the 1980s and 1990s, it challenged the North American urban planning system. New legislation allowed for mixed use, blending residential, commercial, cultural, institutional and, where appropriate, industrial uses together. This included ‘home occupation’, which incorporated the right to pursue small-scale work activities at home, and under which model there were usually restrictions on the number of employees and commercial or client visits to the premises.

The term ‘live/work’ signifies that the building or unit is primarily used for residential purposes, but that working is permitted, while ‘work/ live’ means the work component takes priority over the residential. In urban planning legislation, live/work is often associated with residential and mixed-use zones and codes, whereas work/live is associated with commercial, industrial or mixed-use zones and codes. The main

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→ San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed the Live/Work Ordinance in 1988, which sought to legitimise non-normative working and living arrangements for artists and later for those in the tech industries.

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Regulating for live/work spaces in San Francisco has seen many new housing typologies develop. Image: Andréanne Doyon

difference between live/work and work/live and home occupation is the ‘disturbance factor’; that is, how intrusive the activities in the building are for its neighbours. In Australia, home occupations are generally permitted in current residential and mixed-use zones as long as they do not disturb the neighbours. While artist communities and creative entrepreneurs in Australia have been blurring the boundaries between living and working for decades, live/work (or work/live) as a formalised land use does not exist.

The adaptive reuse of vacant or underused buildings and lots is a strand of the live/work, work/live movement. Locations such as Collingwood in Melbourne, Northbridge in Perth and Surry Hills in Sydney are all home to numerous adaptive reuse projects and people working in the creative economies, with councils often turning a blind eye to the buildings’ unregulated use. Australia is yet to see the development of new land use or mixed-use live/work zones such as those

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→ New legislation created for the formalisation of artist spaces eventually benefited wealthy non-artists, and in the process transformed the areas where the spaces were located into middle-class residential neighbourhoods.

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in North America. Since the 1990s, live/work has also been formalised in Western Europe, and by the 2000s the movement had taken hold in places such as Eastern Europe, Russia and China.

As a land-use and building typology, live/work can support urban neighbourhoods through providing a diversity of uses, it can exhibit flexibility of uses over time, and it intersects with housing, job, transportation and infrastructure planning to support an integrated approach to urban planning. The live/work ethic advocates for mixing stores, offices and housing, and can help make neighbourhoods busier and more productive, meaning they may be livelier and safer. Live/ work can lead to a reduction in automobile use, improved air quality, a decrease in dependency on natural resources and reduced sprawl. It can also support and promote efficient land use by putting maximum floor area within a given envelope. Increased choice as to how and where people live and work, as well as the accommodation of different lifestyles and new demographics, can result in a built environment that is better able to respond to the changes in cities that occur over time.

The City of Perth encourages residential uses within commercial precincts – for example in West Perth – but what happens when you want to work in your own home in the city or the suburbs? How many workers can you have? Can you put up signage? What services are prohibited? How easy or expensive is it to change the use of a building through the planning system? What spaces and safety conditions need to be adhered to? The WA planning scheme currently stipulates that home occupation means that the business cannot employ non-household members, and that it cannot occupy over 20 square metres or have a physical retail component. A ‘home business’ cannot employ over two people, be larger than 50 square metres or have a physical retail component.

With a shift in the attitudes of the Australian federal and state governments towards innovation and creativity, planning regimes also need to be more creative in order to support living and working conditions for the twenty-first century. With an increase in densities, there is an opportunity to explore further experiments in live/work.

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Let’s get closer together. An increase in housing types means more lifestyles to choose from. ← FUTURE

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Let’s get closer together. A more compact city leaves more space to enjoy.

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Let’s get closer together. A denser city means better access to retail and commercial services.

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Let’s get closer together. Living with others means you can save more of your own money.

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t s en ng, del tm si o ar ea d m e ap ecr ise ar h it s d at ng W ze or vi . si rp -li ing co co rg of e em Many housing types are antithetical to how people are living today because people don’t have as many material goods as they used to. Those under thirty may be living a life where they don’t own much at all. Music is digitised and streamed (Sonos, Spotify), treasured photo albums live in the cloud or within applications (Dropbox, iPhoto), tools are pooled (Open Shed), vehicles and rides are shared (Flexicar, BlaBlaCar, Uber), there’s no landline phone or TV cable, kitchen appliances are becoming redundant with the ubiquity of food delivery services (Foodora, Deliveroo) and pets are borrowed (DogVacay, BorrowMyDoggy). The young are also likely to be renting the premises they are in. In fact, data from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research reveals that only 50 per cent of Australians lived in a house that they own in 2014. If this trend continues it means many of today’s young Australians will never own their own home.

With transformations in digital technologies and housingprice pressures changing living habits, people will not only possess fewer physical objects in the future, but new apartment dwellers will be more likely to occupy less space at a later age (unlike their peers who dwell on the suburban fringe, where housing sizes continue to grow). These private domestic spaces are decreasing in size to become more efficient, hopefully more affordable, and for some restless millennials, more desirable.

One model to emerge as part of the trend towards downsizing private domestic space is branded co-living spaces such as The Collective (London), Zoku (Amsterdam) and Roam (Miami, Madrid, 45

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Ubud). In the corporatised co-living model the occupants rent private bedroom space (some bedrooms are as small as ten square metres) on a rolling contract for weeks or months, but share living and working spaces. These collective spaces are often programmed with extracurricular activities such as yoga, business workshops, cooking classes and guest talks that facilitate social exchange between renters. Systems of logistics, such as apps and chat platforms, facilitate the sharing of objects and space. Access is granted if you are part of a tribe (students, communes, families or business people).

One of the global market leaders in co-living arrangements is the Chinese company You+, which has built over ten co-living spaces and claims over 5,000 members. Private bedrooms (with bathroom) range from 20 to 50 square metres in size. There is a minimum six-month stay and an average rent of AU$470 per month. At You+, people over 45 are discouraged, and couples with children or those who are anti-social are not permitted as members. Tech entrepreneurs tend to be given preference.

Subscribing to a co-living or dormitory arrangement such as You+ can mean lower rental costs (relative to renting out a

A dormitory room at You+ in Guangzhou. Image courtesy of You+

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Common rooms within the apartment building provide space for work and play. You+ tenants organise regular activities, from film nights to speaker presentations and group dinners. Image courtesy of You+

single-bedroom apartment on an above-average income), a surfeit of potential friends and a flexible rental contract. For some, this may be a genuinely desirable option, while for others it may be the only option in a competitive rental climate and at a time when there are few affordable housing options.

As private interior space contracts and shared domestic spaces become more common, the public realm is also changing.

Formerly private activities such as working and communication are occurring more frequently outside of the home, and the public sphere is taking on characteristics of interior or domestic 47

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settings: intimate spaces, interior furnishings and finishes, pocket parks, guerrilla gardening. The idea of what constitutes a home may be changing and expanding to consider urban space.

There is a lot of hyperbole around the branded co-living spaces like You+ that have emerged under the so-called sharing economy – also known as the communal, collaborative, gig, inclusive or social economy. But there is a tension between the realities of the model and the benevolence of the act of sharing.

At the behest of the property owner, co-living spaces tend to have fewer fixed furnishings and cheaper construction. They also have a greater number of occupants because typical apartment spaces (living room, laundry, kitchen) are compressed. Behind You+ and its ilk there are venture capitalists looking for high returns.

Co-living arrangements are transforming the physical typologies and financial models of housing and are the latest in a long tradition of collective housing arrangements, from the kibbutz to student dormitories to share houses, baugruppen and boarding houses. With a quarter of Australian households to contain one person by 2031, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a rethink of how we build collective and individual space in a denser city that reflects how many people want to live today – and tomorrow – is needed. We can see that market and societal demands are pushing people towards sharing space, but many co-living arrangements do nothing to address housing affordability in the long term.

Right: There are over ten branded branches of You+ in China. Image courtesy of You+

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The story of Perth’s low-density composition and growth is well understood. In the last decade, the reasons for moving away from it have also become broadly accepted. Arguments for an increasingly urgent need to develop infill housing for a growing population that results in a more compact city form have been well communicated and form an inevitable part of the discussion around density.

However, understanding the problem is one thing; exploring its potential solutions is another. Economics, stigma, inertia and layers of legislation mean Perth is substantially failing to meet the state government target of 47 per cent infill for new residential development across the metropolitan area by 2031.

The primary mechanism that local governments have used to implement the top-down, long-term vision for more infill housing is ‘upcoding’; that is, identifying and increasing sites with higher development potential. This, in turn, has led to increasing friction between those supportive of market-driven speculation and those calling for affordable housing, the entrenchment of NIMBYism, built-form policies that prevent sites from reaching their potential, and a questioning of whether infill density is improving or dismantling the spatial and cultural qualities of our suburbs.

It is debatable whether more or less regulation might help to achieve the infill targets. On the one hand, further top-down regulation may be required to force targets to be met. On the other, the bluntness of the instruments used for housing delivery may prevent new and innovative approaches to density and development from appearing.

Is there an alternative? Can regulation ever be expected to adequately address the complexities of how people could, should and want to live together? Can current regulation become an instrument to support non-standard approaches to achieving density? Can individual buildings be prototypes that permit a range of possibilities for planning legislation? Could density conditions be negotiated rather than preordained, and if they can be, what might happen?

Left: The Primaries warehouse in Fremantle was redeveloped with architect Brian Klopper. Image: Stuart Smith

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It is worth considering a project where these questions have come into play.

Built in 1923 as a wool and hide store, the Primaries warehouse was used to store wool for 70 years until it was purchased for conversion into residential units. In 1993, approval was granted for 17 dwellings on the Primaries Woolstores site in Fremantle.

This was in addition to the 23 dwellings that had been approved three years prior, and subsequently built.

The Primaries is located on South Terrace in Fremantle in a former woolstore. Image: Nearmap

The resultant 40 grouped dwellings doubled the allowable density of the R35 site (the R35 code stipulates a minimum site area of 220 square metres per dwelling), made possible through a density bonus, granted under a clause of the town-planning scheme relating to ‘places, buildings and objects of historical or scientific interest’. Council could relax any provision of the scheme, including the density of a site, where preservation of part of an existing building deemed to be significant took place. In this instance, as the result of a proposal to retain the roof structure and external walls of the 6,070-square-metre warehouse, the site density was varied considerably, as were the required setbacks and the private open space requirements.

Brian Klopper, a local architect becoming increasingly well-known for his canny, idiosyncratic residential projects, was engaged to design both stages of the development, with Stage 2 selling in just eight weeks. Within the boundary perimeter walls, Klopper inserted three rows of grouped housing and two large open courts that function as inner streets, open to the sky, for pedestrian and car access, for open car parking, for shared 52

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Site plan showing Stage 2 of the warehouse conversion. Image courtesy of Fremantle City Library History Centre

gardens and for each dwelling to address. Houses are built in rows, with party walls orthogonal to the perimeter walls and terminated on the inner court ends by full-height curtain glass walls.

This is a terrace house typology, expanded vertically and flooded with light. Multifunctional and multifarious, the two-and-a-halfstorey units have ductile, adaptable spaces able to be genuinely appropriated by occupants as houses, or for office or retail purposes, with little or no modification.

The most compelling aspect of the Primaries project, and what holds the most enduring relevance, is its deft balancing of communality and privacy. It is a remarkable exemplar of mediumdensity development because it maintains the ideals of an individual house – privacy, comfort and customisability – within the compact dimensions of a collective residential cluster. The defining 53

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Maintaining the individual house in a collective housing cluster allows for a balance between private and common space. Image courtesy of Fremantle City Library History Centre

feature of the inner courts is public space. Connectivity, so valued in the urban morphology of cities such as Fremantle, and so often suppressed in multi-unit developments, is enhanced.

This is a propositional project. It not only offers a propositional way of living in the city, but a propositional way of approaching density. Because of the density bonus provision, the developer, architect and planners have been able to establish the rules and conditions of the site, rather having to follow rules.

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Negotiated conditions were necessary due to the unique nature of the warehouse. It’s worth considering that if the warehouse had not existed on the site, the scheme, even in identical form, would be unlikely to have been approved.

It’s also worth reconsidering subdivision. We are accustomed to subdivision being about land, to density codes being related to minimum site areas and plot ratios. Perhaps density is more about people than buildings; about occupation, not containers. We may need to consider new ways of subdividing all sorts of buildings, rather than land. And we may need to build things that are subdivisible from the outset.

It’s possible to imagine progressive planning conditions being initiated by other projects. It’s possible to imagine height and setback provisions being varied for projects that demonstrate exceptional solar access and ventilation. It’s possible to imagine density bonuses based on performance, adaptability, communality or affordability. With these sorts of expanded parameters for density bonuses, at once specific and wide-ranging, initiated and tested by project, new forms of housing may emerge that more effectively serve our contemporary, changing city.

Courtyards retaining the roofing framework from the former warehouse.

Image courtesy of Fremantle City Library History Centre and Mark Brophy Estate Agent

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in te s ta ht es lig of c i an gh ce bl f . rb hi an pu e o ion bu lie rt g fac at su n po in e fic A or im in th si Th e nta in en th ai e r d m ac te sp ea gr

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Built on the frontier of Perth in the 1960s and officially opened in 1970, Crestwood Estate is a rare model of suburbia in Australia.

Based loosely on the American Radburn concept, Crestwood is held together by a network of parks and outdoor spaces. The development and preservation of this high outdoor amenity offers some clues to dealing with density in the suburbs today.

After purchasing land in Thornlie, 18 kilometres south of Perth, landowner Ron Sloan toured Europe and the US with his architect and planner at the time, Hugh Reynolds, to look at alternative models of urban development. Their trip included a visit to Radburn in New Jersey, USA, home to a new type of housing estate.

Crestwood Estate took inspiration from Radburn in its use of a curving and interlocking geometry of roadways and parklands that create a varying suburban condition. However, while the Radburn 57

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'Wandering landscaped parks lace the neighbourhood with paths meandering through flowering trees, green lawns and leafy shrubbery to and from schools and recreational centres,' reads a Crestwood brochure.

Image courtesy of Crestwood Home Owners Association

model was characterised by streets for cars only (‘the separation of man and motor’), and separate paths for pedestrians, Crestwood is not. Additionally, Radburn had dwellings fronting onto parklands at the rear, while few of the houses built at Crestwood do this. The majority front onto the streets the way almost all Perth suburban dwellings do, making the streets also green public spaces.

The subdivision of the land at Thornlie happened slowly due to sluggish economic conditions. Only one estate, designed by Paul Ritter, was built at Crestwood. This, the Royale Ridge (with street names like Regency Drive and Cavalier Court), included a hexagonal brick community centre (which initially served as a sales office) and a well-used common outdoor pool.

The advantage of Crestwood is that the density of the estate is similar to that of surrounding suburbs, but Crestwood has more open space. This defaulting to the street as the entry side, dissimilar to Radburn, prevents the space of the street becoming lost; the generous setbacks and open (and unfenced) front gardens create an open public condition. These spaces become places for play and assembly as well as road access. The park spaces behind them are also public space.

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Green spaces connect residents' backyards at Crestwood Estate. Image: Stuart Harrison

Just as the front gardens of post-war suburban homes were unfenced, the rear gardens of the Crestwood houses were intended to be free from defined boundaries. However, in reality, all properties are fenced, as residents have sought to create private outdoor space. This has decreased passive surveillance of the park, which has implications for safety. Since there is little surveillance from streets of the parks, the estate relies on surveillance from dwellings. Regulations have tried to keep the fences transparent, with partial success.

The original design for Crestwood had unfenced backyards that flowed into open space. Image: Stuart Harrison

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The public park acts as a giant shared front lawn. Image: Stuart Harrison

Philosophically, Crestwood sits in an aspirational space – it is an example of high-amenity park-based urbanism that could allow higher density. Recent innovative housing projects, such as Heller Street Park and Residences by Six Degrees Architects in Melbourne, have re-engaged the design and planning profession with the idea of shared-amenity outdoor space that is both public park and giant shared front lawn. When read against a recent project such Heller Street, Crestwood (in its actual built form) reveals itself as worthy of re-consideration as a model for future suburban planning.

The layout of Crestwood also has the potential to support densification, given the high amenity created by continual frontage onto generally underused park space. This model of suburban renewal has occurred broadly in suburban Perth in high-amenity areas, such as those near the river and the beach. Parkland provides an equivalent form of amenity to be exploited.

However, there are barriers to Crestwood realising its densification potential. The Crestwood Homes Owners Association, which acts as a sub-government (a ‘mini shire’) that controls all building work, has resisted change. Its model borrows from that of strata titling, which is extensively used in multi-residential projects. This means there is another layer of control on top of local government planning regulations. These controls have assisted in preventing densification through subdivision of the Crestwood sites.

While the outdoor spaces of the Crestwood Estate are key to the success of the project, valuable lessons can also be learnt 60

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through considering the housing. The housing stock at Crestwood is consistent with the style seen in Perth in the 1970s and 1980s – generally sensible, modest, well-handled brick modernist villas.

The house types of this period are also, typically, sensibly sized compared to contemporary offerings. As there were no dwellings constructed from the 1990s onwards, Crestwood Estate is a consistent collection of housing of the period; a high point of Perth suburban housing, even. However, the features of the Crestwood housing stock make it not particularly adaptable to future and changing needs supported by the restrictive governance model.

If judged against the Radburn model, Crestwood is in some ways a failure; for example, the design did not allow for the separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. However, a comparison can and perhaps should be made with the design of the suburbs that sit around it; those suburbs that dominate post-war and late-twentieth-century Perth urbanism. If viewed against these, Crestwood Estate is a successful high-amenity living environment. It highlights the potential and importance of collective outdoor space, and reminds us that park networks should be preserved as cities continue to densify, and should be considered as part of an integrated metropolitan approach to infill housing and public space.

Parklands provides a high level of amenity at Crestwood. Image: Stuart Harrison

Thanks to Graeme Rattigan, Kelly Rattigan, Nicola Smith and John Holland for research assistance.

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Consider, if you will, the suburban street setback.

Enshrined in most residential planning policies, including Western Australia’s Residential Design Codes, street setback requirements dictate that all dwellings are constructed at a uniform distance from the kerb. In low-rise suburban areas, the street setback constitutes an open horizontal plane occupied by arid grass, wheelie bins, concrete driveways and buried conduits. Though often as wide as a tennis court, this lifeless expanse of lawn is trafficked only by the intermittent beams of sensor lights, the paws of household pets, or the rare hurled newspaper or idling lawnmower. At the discretion of its owner, the semi-private space of the setback may be enclosed by a hedge, low brick wall or paling fence, or otherwise left to bleed out into the adjacent public ‘nature strip’.

Why, we might ask, does this space exist? What practical function or cultural role does it serve? In his 1983 novel Mr Palomar, Italo Calvino explains that, while the suburban lawn itself is an ‘artificial object’, the ‘lawn’s purpose is to represent nature’.

However, according to Thomas Schumacher’s essay ‘Buildings and Streets: Notes on Configurations and Use’ (from the book On Streets edited by Stanford Anderson, 1986), the primary purpose of the lawn is not symbolic, but defensive. “The lawn,” writes Schumacher, “does not function to enclose or define street space but only to isolate the street from the house. It is a no-man’s-land, a miniature moat and city wall preventing access or use except at intervals.”

A third explanation for the existence of the setback zone is provided by Peter G. Rowe in his work Modernity and Housing (1993).

While the front lawn of the suburban house belongs to the owner, explains Rowe, utility companies and municipal authorities usually hold easements over multiple adjoining lawns in a complex interweaving of individual and collective ownership.

The origins of the suburban street setback are virtually inseparable from those of suburbia itself. In 1775, influential English landscape architect Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was hired to work alongside his adversary, the architect William Chambers, on the rebuilding of Dorset’s Milton Abbey estate. Their client, Joseph Damer, had purchased both the estate and the adjacent 600-person town, and asked Brown and Chambers to relocate the town further Right: The Civic Suburb site is located in the suburb of Melville.

The map highlights in orange where clustered dwelling approvals make up 25-50 per cent of all approvals. The majority of these clustered dwelling approvals are for battleaxe subdivision proposals.

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Officer Woods’ competition entry highlights that the front yards and verges of suburbia are ripe for more occupation.

away from his new home. Comprising 40 semi-detached houses, the new village of Milton Abbas was arrayed along a single six-metrewide road, with broad grassy verges either side of the road creating a separation of 24 metres between house facades. The product of a compromise between proximity and privacy, between efficient planning and the picturesque, Milton Abbas established suburban parameters that have varied little in the 240 years since.

Enter Fremantle architectural practice Officer Woods and its project, Civic Suburb. Conceived in response to Think Brick Australia’s About Face competition, Civic Suburb is a design concept overdue for further analysis and elaboration. The 2011 competition invited six architectural practices to demonstrate how brick could be creatively deployed in imagining ‘the future of the Australian suburb’. In response to this brief, Officer Woods decided to confront the underutilised space of the street setback.

Where others saw only a barren verge, the Fremantle architects envisioned a staging ground for suburban transformation.

Nominally located in the Perth suburb of Melville but widely applicable, Civic Suburb proposes the insertion of roofed vehicular ‘forecourts’ into the nature strip, alternating with walled communal gardens. When the cars are away, these forecourts act as flexible enclosures for impromptu neighbourhood gatherings.

By placing the cars on the street edge, Officer Woods shows how the concrete driveways of Melville’s battleaxe blocks could be reclaimed as linear green space, while empty garages could be converted into multipurpose ‘front rooms’ that house shopfronts, living spaces, offices or granny flats. The separation of house and 66

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The scheme advocates a return of the front room, housed in the empty garage or carport. Ex-garages may become al fresco areas, living rooms or home-based commercial spaces. Car parking becomes consolidated under forecourts, which provide dense blocks of shade and spaces for individual leisure, play, entertainment or house/garden/car maintenance activities.

car also shrewdly anticipates the eventual obsolescence of the private automobile. Finally, capitalising on the increased activity of commerce and street life, second-storey ‘suburban apartments’ could be built on top of predominantly single-level homes, adding capacity without diminishing valuable open space.

In accordance with the competition brief, the forecourts, walled gardens and front rooms of Civic Suburb are imagined in solid brickwork. Seizing on the sculptural and decorative potential of the material, these brick elements are depicted in a beguiling array of forms, patterns and hues. While it’s hard to imagine typical suburban denizens erecting such artful and elaborate structures, it’s important that we not miss the wall for the bricks.

The significance of this project lies not in its aesthetic qualities, but rather its spatial and strategic dimensions. The escalating pressure of increasing populations, changing demographics and property speculation on the scale and character of Australia’s suburbs is matched only by the intensity of resident opposition, with sunlight and privacy key concerns. Ingeniously anticipating this ‘not in my 67

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backyard’ backlash, Civic Suburb doesn’t challenge the suburban backyard at all: it takes on the front yard instead. Whereas most architect-designed suburban projects are clandestine additions tacked on to the rear and hidden from the street, Civic Suburb puts the area’s gradual transformation front and centre.

The value of such an overt strategy becomes clear in light of Perth’s current predicament. According to various metrics, Perth is Australia’s least dense city. In fact, if not for a handful of low-rise North American centres, Perth might be the least dense city in the entire world. With this in mind, you might imagine how an expected doubling of Perth’s population by 2050 could transform the sprawling city into a model of dense urbanism. Instead, according to the Perth and Peel@3.5 million report, 53 per cent of the 800,000 new homes to be built by 2050 have been allocated fringe greenfield sites. The future Perth will look a lot like the present one, only larger and more spread out. This is evidence of both political ploys and careless inaction, and Perth’s increasing expansion demands alternative visions.

It’s also important to understand why greenfield subdivision presents such an expedient option. Most suburban redevelopment relies on the acquisition and consolidation of multiple residential lots, or the rezoning of formerly commercial land. The replacement of individual properties and local businesses with collective housing complexes can lead to a loss of communal diversity and streetscape variation. Furthermore, in order to justify the huge expense of creating larger sites out of separate titles, private developers may be compelled to build as big and as cheaply as possible, forever impacting neighbourhood character.

Civic Suburb is a compelling proposition not just because it shows how underutilised suburban land could be intensified as an alternative to greenfield expansion, but also because it suggests how this intensification could occur without developers and consolidated lots. In what could be described as ‘do-it-yourself urbanism’, the project imagines an iterative increase in suburban density at the scale of the suburban plot, with changes carried out by individual homeowners to effect change, and intensifies the use of existing spaces rather than relying on the acquisition of new land. While Officer Woods has carefully avoided specifying � Despite being the least dense Australian city, Perth, to a distance of 40 kilometres from the CBD, greatly increased its population density in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

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precisely how shared ownership of communal carports and street gardens would be negotiated (it was only a competition entry, after all), such mechanisms exist. So-called ‘cluster planning’ initiatives allow for the transfer of conventionally subdivided or publicly owned land into common property, owned and maintained by a collective body corporate. Of course, the transfer of ownership from local government to private citizenry is no simple matter. Moreover, the atomised nature of suburbia itself embodies a general aversion to sharing that must inevitably be overcome.

In the 1950s, when suburbs like Melville last underwent a period of rapid expansion, an average household numbered five occupants. Today, that average has nearly halved, creating a disconnect between outward appearance and inner reality. Walking down a typical suburban street, we encounter large, multi-roomed dwellings whose many windows do not reflect the number of occupants within. In this context, greater density might not mean an increase in built area, but instead compartmentalisation into spaces better suited to smaller households and changing living conditions. A brave incursion into the no-man’s land of the street setback, Civic Suburb offers a compelling vision for incremental suburban transformation at the scale of the individual plot.

The use of clay brick and pavers as the structural armature and ground surface of the forecourts allows for individual expression.

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BIOGRAPHIES SIMON ANDERSON is an architect, educator and author. He is Head and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts at the University of Western Australia (UWA).

ANDRÉANNE DOYON is a research fellow at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University and is in the final stages of a PhD in Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne.

GRACE MORTLOCK and DAVID NEUSTEIN are directors of otherothers. They work across residential, commercial and institutional projects, curate installations and events, exhibit projects internationally, and teach at the University of Technology Sydney.

ANTHONY DUCKWORTH-SMITH is a researcher, teacher and practitioner at the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC). He recently published Sprawl and the City, a book that explores the quality-of-place in predominantly low-density cities such as Perth.

JENNIE OFFICER is the director of architecture practice Officer Woods. She is also a senior lecturer at UWA.

ALESSIO FINI is a Melbournebased, Perth-raised designer.

He currently works at Fieldwork Projects and was previously at Casper Mueller Kneer Architects and Universal Design Studio in London.

KRISTIEN RING is a professor of architecture and urban design at the University of South Florida, and principal of AA Projects interdisciplinary studio, Berlin.

She was the founding director of Deutsches Architektur Zentrum.

STUART HARRISON is an architect and urban designer, and studied at UWA and RMIT University. He is director of Harrison and White, and consults nationally in design-led planning and design review.

NIC TEMOV is an urban planner and co-organiser of Jane’s Walk, Perth.

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GEOFFREY LONDON is a professor of architecture at UWA. He is a former government architect of Victoria and Western Australia, and a past dean and head of architecture at UWA.

TIMOTHY MOORE is the editor of Future West (Australian Urbanism) and director of architecture practice Sibling. He has worked as an editor of Volume and Architecture Australia magazines.

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Future West (Australian Urbanism) is a biannual publication that looks towards the future of urbanism, taking Perth and Western Australia as its reference point.

EDITORIAL BOARD Simon Anderson Alessio Fini Geoffrey London Jennie Officer EDITOR Timothy Moore SUBEDITOR Rowena Robertson PUBLICATION DESIGN Stuart Geddes

DISTRIBUTION Future West (Australian Urbanism) is distributed by ALVA at the University of Western Australia. To obtain a copy, navigate to alva.uwa.edu.au/community/ futurewest Future West (Australian Urbanism) has been made possible with a generous private donation.

ISSN 2206-4087 Copyright 2016 The material within the publication remains the right of the contributors.

PRINTING Printgraphics, Melbourne PUBLISHER Future West (Australian Urbanism) is published by the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts at the University of Western Australia.

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