Adapturbia M.Arch Studio
The Adapturbia M.Arch design studio re-imagines the single-lot suburban subdivision and its nuclear home. As a body of research it calls on the spatial reasoning skills held by architects to re-look at diversification and densification for household-scaled investors at the increment of the single suburban lot.
The free-standing suburban home model has failed to adapt to changing demographics, diversified cultures, shrinking household sizes and varied lifestyles. Architects involvement in the volume housing of the suburbs is usually restricted to the finessing of elevations or the specification of finishes.
These issues raise a series of questions; How can the suburbs be made attractive and affordable for our adult (Gen. Y) children? Can urban diversity through both use and building type be retrofitted to the suburb without a fundamental reworking of land title and infrastructure? What mechanisms or innovations might catalyse the shift within existing housing market structures?
Brooke Jackson
Sydney is described as one of the least affordable cities in the world. Whilst this is true when the metric pits average household income against average housing costs, it often fails to consider the leveraging of personal wealth through home mortgages. A high earning family banking their income into the most expensive family home they can finance makes sound investment sense. If this family are paying off their house with over 30% of their large income however, they would be defined as suffering ‘housing stress’. Understandably the affordability index is somewhat skewed.
Emma Barnes
Currently in NSW the sale of a family home is not subject to capital gains tax. The effect this tax concession has on housing stock (no doubt unintended) is that household investment in property is often consolidation of into one large home. Spare bedrooms, home theatres, duplicated living spaces and rumpus rooms are used to grow family investment without necessarily serving a deep programmatic need. Indeed, it has been estimated that there are sufficient bedrooms located in all the oversized houses across Sydney to solve Sydney’s affordability ‘crisis’ altogether.
Research by The McKell Institute, an independent, not-for-profit, public policy institute, addresses long overdue reform in Sydney suburbs head on. Amongst their list of 40 things we can do to improve supply and affordability are the gradual phasing out of capital gains tax in favour of fair and universal annual land tax (McKell Institute).
Simon Gollan
This tax reform would gradually shift the trend away from single oversized family home investments. Household investment portfolios would be freed up to diversify both in number and frequency with a land tax based on land value held in place of a transaction tax at the time of sale.
The McKell Institute are also lobbying for the provision of “more medium density housing in the form of “21st Century Sydney Terrace Housing”. The terrace housing type is recognisable and tried in Sydney and would be a good start along the road to greater density and diversity.
Rapid evolution through the emerging sharing and service economies, exemplified by companies such as GoGet , Aussie House Swap , AirBnB and Share-shed are all recalibrating notions of urban space, ownership, ‘value’ and ‘return’. The new transactional relationships, many peer-to-peer, are beginning to reshape the city in small ways.
Long Tran
Fakhry Azwar
What was once considered a private residence might be optimised in these new conditions through design for its fitness as an Air B’n’B rental with capacity to generate income for the owners whilst they are on holidays. Additional zones of privacy or security within the main dwelling would allow precious or delicate possessions to be cordoned off from guests. The potential for subdivision within the dwelling itself would allow the owner to make two independent sub-lets within the one home. Or even allow the owner to remain living in one half while they Air B’n’B the other.
Emphasis is slowly shifting away from mass-production at a price-point back to better quality and serviceable products. In a service economy, where you pay for the service not the ownership, quality and longevity of products trump price every time. It is worth contemplating the effect this might have on future construction in the suburbs.
William Cai
The true innovation in the house and land package lay not only in the in the design or typology of the homes but in the financial model through which they were delivered. Potential buyers gained the confidence to proceed by inspecting and experiencing demonstration homes first hand. Meanwhile the construction company minimised their outlay and risk by avoiding any speculative construction. “It was the clients who bore the cost of replicating the house on land they had purchased themselves.”
Fast forward to today and the same financial model persists in the suburbs, minus (to a large part) the spatial intelligence of the architect. Where the architect once brought their professional knowledge and nous to the suburbs, volume housing companies have now moved to a market-driven model. Homes are assembled to meet a client driven wish list. Decisions are driven by the clients limited knowledge of what neighbours have built, what they see in the magazines and their taste in colours and materials. The normalising effect of popular opinion generates the predominant housing typology with very little real choice.
UTS is embarking on a three year project exploring “The role of Sydney in a globalised context… asking how the city might work and what it might look like if it started to operate as one of a cluster of global metropoli.” My Adapturbia studio sits within this larger space of enquiry and imagines many of the abovementioned tax and planning innovations are in place. It calls on the spatial reasoning skills held by architects to re-look at diversification and densification for ‘mum and dad’ investors at the increment of the single suburban lot.
Shahab Makhtare
The studio aims to re-imagine the single lot suburban subdivision and its nuclear home. Research within the studio speculates on the future of the suburb as students proceed through archetypal housing analysis and innovative housing prototypes. The final output of the studio sees students develop and reiteratively test their own housing typologies. The output of the studio is projective in that it does not strictly adhere to current planning laws, rather it intends to offer a series of alternative futures through which current laws might be questioned or recalibrated.
(This writing is a long hand version of an article by Adam that was published in The NSW Architecture Bulletin 2014)
Project: Adapturbia M.Arch Studio
Type: Teaching
Description: A UTS M.Arch design studio led by Adam over three-years
Location: Sydney, NSW
Client: University of Technology Sydney
Year: 2011-2013
Team: Adam Russell