Canberra Housing ACT

Upon entering this competition, we developed a vision to engender a happy, resilient community through the metaphor of the Russian Matryoshka dolls, which constructs the spaces and linkages for social interaction. This project was the beginning of the layers of space thinking that is now deeply embedded within the studio’s design philosophy.

The open space networks and shared community spaces were what we saw as being the cement that bonds the residential building blocks together. We wanted to create a design solution that celebrated Canberra’s Carbon Positive approach to material, methodology, and ideology. This was then manifested in our design that sought to reinforce Northbound Avenue by creating the horizontal hillside village within the Garden City Walls. We put forward a proposal that offered a range of accommodation, ranging from one to three bedroom apartments, with a mix of single or two story units.

Our philosophical approach to this project was to embed social and economic value into the address so that it could be an inherent long term. We placed second in this National competition, and in doing so we were ahead of many of Australia’s most respected architectural practices. This competition cemented our place as a disruptor to the norm.