Alternative housing model: Anne Street Gardens Villas
Anna O'Gorman, Anna O'Gorman Architects

Anne Street Garden Villas is a social housing project that highlights how government can play a leading role in delivering well-designed affordable housing through public competitions and demonstration projects. It demonstrates innovation in the design, delivery and management of social housing and provides insights and evidence into the barriers and solutions for this specific housing type.

Anna highlighted the importance of enhancing a resident's agency, how good quality design can remove the stigma associated with living in social housing and foster well-being, and the role of design guides in raising the quality and diversity in housing.

Sofia: How did the clients’ aspirations shape the project outcomes and what role did it play as a demonstration project?

Anna: It was clear from the outset that our clients had high aspirations for the Anne Street project and shared a vision for achieving good quality housing outcomes for the social housing tenants. Having everybody on board with the same vision is essential to getting a good project across the line. We were encouraged to challenge the status-quo and explore innovative ideas in response to the themes in the competition brief — climatically responsive places, healthy and safe public and private places, intergenerational places, entrepreneurial places, and total energy places.

Knowing that the broader purpose of the demonstration projects was to raise the quality and standard of social housing through exemplar developments, initially published through the ideas competition, then built, followed by inclusion in the Social Housing Design Guideline, we felt a greater level of expectation to achieve carefully considered outcomes.
How does the Social Housing Design Guideline aim to improve outcomes in social housing and what did you learn about the importance of making a good neighbourhood?

The Guideline illustrates good design outcomes of affordable social housing through diverse, local and contextually specific examples. These examples challenge typical design approaches by showing different types of designs and developments with higher residential densities than would typically be delivered in a particular area. Each demonstrates how great social and environmental outcomes can be achieved for the neighbourhood, street, house, and garden. The Guideline adopts a long-term approach to creating diverse and sustainable communities through ten essential ingredients and provides a framework to guide decision-making throughout the development process including consideration of the on-going maintenance and management of social housing.

Through this project, we realised the opportunity to address some of the issues associated with social housing by making a great neighbourhood. Too often, there can be a sense of a divide between social housing residents and their neighbours arising from a stigma associated with living in social housing. It's important to remove institutional markers of social housing and make a positive contribution to the street to connect residents to their neighbourhood and local community. One of the ways we chose to do this was to respond to the scale and character of the street with fine grain, small scale buildings. Another way was to relocate the car parking, typically located at the front of social housing, to the side boundary and create an inviting street frontage with dwelling entrances and gardens. We also balanced the increased yield with a more generous central garden space, understanding the value that would bring to the local ecology and the cooling effect of the garden to the houses and common areas.

How did the Anne Street project expand upon the ideas from the ‘missing middle’ competition?

The two main design ideas from the competition scheme we were encouraged to explore and develop in Anne Street were the central shared garden and the thresholds between public and private spaces. Shared spaces in social housing aren't always viewed in a positive light, with tension sometimes arising between tenants leading to greater management of social issues by department staff. For the success of the project, it was important to design a space that residents felt comfortable in and was also supported by management.

The thresholds between public and private space provide different levels of privacy for residents. We wanted to create spaces for incidental day-to-day interaction between the privacy of the home or private garden, and the semi-public spaces of the adjacent shared garden and connecting walkways. These two ideas, the central garden and thresholds, also became key climate responsive measures. Planting areas, deep soil zones and a water retention basin were incorporated increasing ecological performance, shade and cooling, while the breathable walls of the private outdoor spaces allowed dappled light and air to flow through the units and central garden.

As a social housing demonstration project, affordability was a key driver. The designs had to be replicable for others to be able to incorporate or implement. During the ideas competition we researched innovative construction methods such as efficient and adaptable modular systems that could accommodate the changing needs of a growing family. In the Anne Street project, we incorporated very simple building forms and efficient light-weight construction methodologies such as ‘stick build’ which don’t require highly skilled trades, and materials such as block work that are affordable and readily available.

We were also interested in addressing affordability by reducing our use of material resources and designing space efficient homes. This underpinned a key principle of the project that if we can learn to design and live with less, that will go a long way to achieving affordability. Our research on international precedents such as the traditional Machiya Japanese house which incorporates clever ways of using space that manage privacy, sunlight and views, challenged us to think about how people live, and how we can improve on that in the most space efficient way in our designs.

Can you discuss the stakeholder engagement you undertook for this project and how adopting a person-centred approach influenced the project outcomes?

The first engagement focused on the government department workers involved in the delivery, management, and on-going maintenance including housing managers and building asset teams. The second engagement focused on social housing residents and included site visits of existing social housing, and meetings and interactive exercises with a cross-section of individual tenants to identify the most important qualities they valued in housing. Their top ten list of qualities, commencing from the most important, were a kitchen garden, landscape, a village, ‘under a tree’, a sky view, a courtyard, ‘green inside’, a backyard, ‘inside out’ and watching the street. Most qualities reflect the importance of a connection to the outside, productive gardens,nature and community. While the engagement revealed a desire to be a part of a community to reduce their sense of social isolation, this was counterbalanced with a desire for nesting and a sense of safety and security.

Stakeholder engagement provided invaluable knowledge and enabled us to understand diverse perspectives on what is and isn’t currently working in social housing. By adopting a person-centred approach, we were able to develop a shared understanding with the project team of the ways that design can promote feelings of well-being amongst residents and support their livelihoods, while addressing concerns of the building and asset managers.

How does the design support a residents’ agency and build community?

The conversations with tenants highlighted a primary challenge for the project which was to design practical ways to create a community while simultaneously supporting an individual’s autonomy. These insights led to key design moves that create welcoming and special places where people felt valued and a sense of safety and security in their homes. Simple things such as having a small garden with sunlight and drainage, or somewhere to host a barbecue were important, as were basic good design principles such as access to daylight and ventilation. Ultimately, we wanted residents to feel a sense of pride and develop a personal connection to their home, to support their independence and autonomy by providing them with control of their private environment and to give them choice over when and how they engaged with their neighbours.

To achieve this, each dwelling is designed as a standalone unit with different colours and separate entrances to reflect each resident’s independence and identity. Residents have two choices to enter / exit their homes — one from the front or public address and the other from the communal walkways or central garden. The units are self-contained so that residents don’t feel as though they are forced to share areas for daily tasks such as laundry spaces and clothes drying courts. Each unit has a private and semi-protected outdoor terrace, with benches facing into the home rather than into the garden. Screens allow glimpses of the shared spaces for incidental interaction and passive surveillance, while allowing for cross-breezes to flow through the garden and house.
The central garden space with deep soil planting and trees provide amenity and outlook for all of the dwellings, with a central meeting place and BBQ providing activities for socialising. Units are designed for accessibility and ageing in place and can be adapted to accommodate changing needs or circumstances for existing or future residents.

What are you most proud of and what are the key lessons to support good outcomes and innovation in social and affordable housing?

Delivering good outcomes in social housing is very challenging. It can be difficult to balance competing factors such as creating attractive places at low cost, or increasing residential densities while also providing generous garden spaces. I’m most proud of the outcome we were able to achieve taking these factors into consideration.

Affordability is really important. As a demonstration project, a key challenge we had was to reduce barriers in replicating our model. Being mindful of cost-effective materials and utilising simple, clever construction methods can go some way to reducing costs and timeframes, and alleviate some pressure around labour shortages.

Effective and collaborative governance between local, state and federal levels of government is critical to encourage innovation and address any challenges associated with finding new or better solutions. I think social housing will only improve if there is a shared vision and commitment to achieving better outcomes. Large teams are responsible for delivering social housing and everyone needs to be onboard.

At the state level, further improvements to governance would include involving the delivery team during the design stages of social housing. This would have maintained continuity in decision-making and streamlined the construction process. In addition, social housing residents can be persons with disabilities, are often older, and can demonstrate behaviours of concern. Allocating time to consult specialists such as occupational therapists to advise on how spaces can be adapted for diverse needs would further future-proof homes and support people to age in place, or increase flexibility to accommodate future resident needs.

Cost and time are often prioritised over quality and liveability in social housing projects. Project teams would benefit from timelines that allow for meaningful consultation with key stakeholders or specialists to gather valuable advice and feedback. Achieving a better balance between quality, cost, and delivery time is essential. Placing greater emphasis on liveability and recognising the transformative impact of good design on a person’s quality of life can significantly enhance the outcomes of multi-residential developments.

Project team

Client: Department of Housing and Public Works with Office of Queensland Government Architect

Partnership: Housing Partnerships Office, Building and Asset Services (both from the Department of Housing and Public Works) and Office of Queensland Government Architect

Architect: Anna O’Gorman Architects (Anna O’Gorman and Paul Violett)

Landscape Architect: LAT27 Design Studios now LatStudios

Builder: Nano Construction Pty Ltd

Town Planner: Bennett + Bennett

Structural Engineer: Westera Partners

Hydraulic Engineer: H Design

Mechanical, Electrical And Fire Engineering: Ashburner Francis

Quantity Surveyor: Rider Levett Bucknall

Building Certification and Access Consultant: Knisco

Program

Residential: 7 x dwellings

3 x 1-bedroom

4 x 2-bedroom

Communal:

Central garden and BBQ area

Number of levels: 2 storeys

Produced with the assistance of the Alastair Swayn Foundation