Tarakan Street Social and Affordable Housing

Consultation: We consulted with returning residents, OVGA, Council, DWELP and surrounding residents. This resulted in removing all perimeter fences and inviting the community in to a series of new shared gardens with BBQs, tables, a toddlers’ playground, an arbour and a kitchen garden. These facilities ‘fill the gaps’ in facilities currently available in the neighbourhood.

Massing: The building massing sits inside a DWELP/Council approved envelope respectful of neighbours. The housing steps from homely townhouses to civic proportions of six levels, responding to the adjoining scale, providing 130 comfortable homes in the same amount of space as 13 homes across the road.
History The site’s history is honoured by retaining 20 canopy trees planted for the Olympic Village. The buildings are configured around these trees so that their scale, shade, habitat and memory endure. Colours of Olympic medals and rings are used in the interiors and playground to honour the site’s history.

Design Excellence: The project was reviewed by Office of Government Architect (OVGA) at four touch points, with Council and DWELP prior to Ministerial Approval.

Exceeding the Brief: The design has exceeded the design brief using many points of innovation including:

*An innovative and inexpensive method of combining apartments to make larger ones so space is well managed over time,
*Privacy treatment of ground floor apartments,
*Destigmatising the site by inviting the community into shared open spaces,
*Providing a short-cut through the site to the adjoining primary school,
*Only 5-6 apartments per entry so small communities develop,
*Retained a greater number of mature trees,
*Eliminated on-grade carparking to create more green open space,
*Covid-19 supply chain strategy prioritised Melbourne made products and materials,
*All joinery, bricks, specialist lights, tapware, carpets are Melbourne made,
*100 year warranty on the Melbourne-made bricks,
*Carbon neutral certification on the Melbourne-made bricks.

The design sets a new benchmark for design excellence in middle ring suburbs, providing appropriate, careful housing density surrounded by gardens, trees, habitat and deep soil planting.

Missing Middle Exemplar: 130 units on 1.3ha (where 13 houses on the same area on the opposite side of the street) surrounded by a surprising amount of open space with impressive established trees.

Destigmatised site: We’ve rehabilitated the relationship of the buildings to the local community by providing high-quality attractive buildings that set a new standard of excellence in the neighbourhood. We’ve designed new public areas. These including a ‘short cut’ to the adjacent Primary School which invites neighbours to use the project’s communal spaces, including a children’s playground, BBQ’s, gardens, arbours, a bike workshop and shaded seats, all with excellent passive surveillance.

Impact beyond the Site: We’ve removed perimeter fences and paid special attention to the edges of the site to invite the community in. We’ve created promenades through the site, increasing safety and destigmatising the site. These gestures elevate the everyday experience for both the community and residents and have created positive behavioural impacts within and beyond the site.

Wide shallow apartments give superior access to sunlight and fresh air. All have full length balconies – providing an outdoor living space with garden views and sun shading.
Gardens: A significant proportion of the site is garden, with stunning mature trees. Retaining the established trees was essential to the landscape strategy. All homes look out to the gardens. New plantings provide habitat for insects, birds and animals.
Accessible Living: All 130 dwellings are accessible to Silver Standard, Liveable Housing Design Guidelines.
Low Carbon and Low Running Costs: ‘Green Star for New Buildings Certified’, using on-site renewable energy through solar PV, embedded network, eliminating on-site gas. This keeps running costs and energy bills low.

Long life Loose Fit: The apartment buildings were designed around a ‘long life loose fit’ philosophy, which is highly unusual for apartment buildings. Narrow floor plates and careful structural design enable one third of the apartments to be inexpensively combined into larger apartments, and back again, without structural or wet area (kitchen and bathroom) changes. This solves a real problem Homes Victoria have in both allowing residents to age in place while re-configuring apartments to allocate vacant bedrooms to those in need.

Ground Floor Privacy We addressed the common design challenge of providing both privacy and outlooks to ground floor apartments using a wedge-shaped landscape berm to provide a landscape buffer between the private outdoor space and the public realm. These apartments are also fitted with operable, shuttered privacy screens. On Tarakan Street a layered interface of landscape, berms and internal pathways separate the dwellings form the street.

Can a Building be A Good Citizen? This question was used as a design diver. Firstly, we’ve design the buildings as a companion to their landscape. We’ve rehabilitated the garden setting to support well-being and create habitat. We’ve improved the quality of the building stock, and introduced lacking shared facilities. The robust brick buildings will age well over time, and are extremely low maintenance. The full width balconies allow residents to clean their own windows. These careful gestures create enduring pride which in turn engenders care.

Multi- generational living Responding to the criticism that a lack of age diversity (as seen in retirement villages) makes for bland living, a mingling of one-, two- and three-bedroom units creates a diverse community. Mixing older and younger people adds social connection, vibrancy and delight. The intergenerationally diverse community also makes them more naturally self-supporting with less reliance on external service providers.

Housing for the 99%: Architecture is for everyone: Tarakan Street’s social and affordable housing is of equal or higher quality to the surrounding private housing, engendering pride in the new and returning residents. The housing is ‘tenure blind’ to foster cohesion. This is a gentle, careful architecture set within generous grounds containing shared, semi-private and private open spaces. The apartments themselves are designed as long-term homes, with abundant sunlight, generous storage spaces and internal comfort.

Dignity Perhaps perversely social housing is used to upgrade and lift the quality of the neighbourhood. Tarakan Street is a good neighbour, creating amenity beyond its site. It’s beautiful shared gardens destigmatise public housing by offering spaces for connection. Residents have dignity, beauty and Silver Standard accessibility which impacts the broader community in subtle yet tangible ways.

Sustainability Measures:
Low Maintenance/Low Waste: We privileged a gentle architecture of quiet calmness, which is also robust, truly low maintenance and resilient. The face brick will endure unblemished. The apartments can be combined without waste and separated again responding to changing needs of residents over time.
Green Star for New Buildings Certified with the use of on-site renewable energy through solar PV and an embedded network, achieving full electric operation and eliminating on-site gas with up to 8.3 NatHERs stars.

Buy Local: Designed during the COVID-19 Lockdowns, and government funded, we felt a heightened responsibility to support local businesses. Buying beautiful local materials and products also radically reduce embodied carbon in transport (especially compared with brick transport or imported joinery from China). The Melbourne made bricks have an 100 year warranty, all joinery is built in Heidelberg; specialist lights, tapware and carpets are manufactured by small local businesses. This guaranteed our supply chain and generating huge savings on carbon in transport.