Future Homes

What constitutes a dignified and generous apartment, building, block and neighbourhood in the second decade of the twenty-first century?
How can suburban architecture be celebrated, diversified, densified, and re-imagined in line with the needs of a changing population?

The FamilyGrammar is an architectural typology for suburban sites across Victoria that delivers community, affordability, amenity, and progressive architectural design for a new generation of suburbanites. The design is guided by a sincere admiration of Melbourne’s middle-ring suburbs. The proposal celebrates and extends what we love about these environments.
Plenty of space, interior and exterior, at a reasonable price. Access to greenery (and the odd fruit tree). Good neighbours. BBQs and basketball hoops. Coming home to your own piece of secluded, sunlit turf.
What might these core suburban values look like when filtered through a new architectural grammar, at a higher density, using an artistic and systematic, research-driven approach to architecture?
How might a new typology amplify the amenity of suburban living, attenuating the sensitive balance between being together and being alone, being in view and being in private, through a re¬imagined suburban picturesque?

FamilyGrammar is a modular housing scheme built around a (small) family of three well-considered apartment typologies. Each typology is composed of a mix of apartments that have been rigorously designed to perform at an international standard; they are spacious, light, and flexible, and work for a range of household constellations. The design is accessible for all bodies and ages; a connective tissue of access balconies produces a permeable massing.
Volumes are modulated in scale to respond to surrounding single-family homes and to the planning scheme. Appreciated but under-utilised spaces that are found on a typical suburban lot—the drive-way, the setback, the side yard, and the roof—have been redesigned to host social interaction and community, ensuring that on plots where all, or any, of the typologies are constructed, an opportunity the site will always service the wider community.

This attentiveness to spatial qualities, both interior and exterior, both secluded and shared, is key to FamilyGrammar, which contributes to good neighbourhoods and meaningful communities, for present generations and those yet to come.