A short exercise into housing typology as part of ‘Wyiala’.

Goal - A socially active home for high density living in Australia

Idea - Simpler, better apartments that are compact yet flexible

Homes in Australia are on average some of the biggest in the world, and with more and more people moving into cities and the ratio of land value, to average income also higher than ever, how can we create appealing and desirable high density housing for the every day Australian?

The key, I believe, is in shifting the conversation from area to volume. If you took the average 2 bedroom apartment in Australia, nominally 75m2 with a floor to ceiling height of 2.7m, you end up with just over 200m3. Alternatively, if you created a space that was 4.2m high (enough for 2x 2.1m high service areas stacked on top of one another) and worked backwards, you would only need 47m2 of floor area to achieve the same ‘space’. 

Pushing it to the next level we could borrow an idea from Japanese design (also adopted by a number of prominent Australian architects - Brit Anderson Mooloombba House) and eliminate the circulation space typically within the bedroom, allowing sleeping spaces to be just that, for sleeping. The architectural proposition then becomes so much more enjoyable, instead of hallways, awkward left over nooks and a random assortment of lightweight partitions, we get to make one really great living space, one really great sleeping space (and then copy and paste it above the bathroom) and one really great bating space.