Missing Middle Terrace Adjustments
A re-think of the terrace typology to incorporate accessible housing, co-housing, and compatible non-residential uses. Conceived of as a city in miniature, the once-private domesticity of suburban life is prized open through a more civic and interconnected ground plane and collective backyard.
Terrace Adjustments
Decomposing traditional walls and fences helps provide a range of spaces where each occupant of the site can find their comfort zone. Street engagement, through-site access, common, shared, threshold and private spaces help curate a weave of superimposed rituals.
Party wall vs street wall
The tried and true terrace house typology is an ideal middle-ring housing type. The type lends itself to a myriad of internal configurations without imposing this diversity on the streetscape. In sequence, the expressed party walls, full-width first floor balcony, customised garden and front door combine to create an organised yet richly diverse street-wall.
Background
The middle-ring suburbs of Sydney are characterised by a fine-grained subdivision and generally arranged on a regular urban grid. With the right legislation, these inherent qualities provide the perfect framework for walkable communities that are vibrant, popular and diverse to emerge.
We believe the deployment of new, more-open land-use typologies will be key to the success of the Missing Middle. Our architectural proposals offer variations within traditional building types. Each explores a milieu of spatial conditions empowering occupants with the capacity to curate their own private and public lives.
Flexible framework
A regularised structural and services ‘scaffold’ establishes a fine-grained urban rhythm in the streetscape.
Self-supporting and permanent party wall elements will demarcate an overall volume for each dwelling. The side silhouette and front roof plane provide consistent rhythm to the street-wall with a design life of 100 years.
Diverse and evolving fit-outs made by owners offer various dwelling configurations including the multi-generational Courtyard home and Accessibility and Carers home above.
Beyond the controls of the draft SEPP a series of non-residential program and alternative ownership models could provide a finer gradient of program effectively future-proofing the site. Design-life 25-35 years.
Architectural ideas competition
Terrace Adjustments was one of two submissions that we submitted to the Missing Middle design competition, run by Planning NSW. Housing Fields joined more than 100 innovative and creative entries in the competition focused on housing typologies for middle-ring densification described as the "missing middle”. The intention of the competition was to test a draft State Planning Policy and provide alternative housing options that bridge the gap between free-standing houses and apartment buildings. Judging of the Missing Middle Competition was completed in January 2017 with the winning designs announced by planning minister Anthony Roberts in mid April.
Insights gained from assessment of the competition proposals will help to shape the final Medium Density Design Guide, assisting the NSW Government’s efforts to improve supply, choice and design of these popular housing types. Planning minister Anthony Roberts said ‘The 111 entries were so imaginative and resourceful that the government was now looking at building some of the submissions as demonstration homes’.
Project: Missing Middle Terrace Adjustments
Type: Residential
Location: Granville, NSW
Client: NSW Government Architect Design Competition submission
Year: 2017
Services: Architecture - Sketch Design
Team: A RAW Architects project - Adam Russell (as Principal and Director of RAW Architects)
Project Code: 1643