The article asked the headline question: Could Australia learn from Singapore to make housing more affordable? The first illustration was of a housing development in Australia, showing typical houses in various stages of completion: see - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-06/could-australia-learn-from-singapore-to-make-housing-affordable/100801082
The obvious response is: why look to Singapore? Then one might ponder the wisdom of perpetuating the ‘house on block’ strategy that has continued in Australia since the first settlement. The suggestion was that 35,000 houses a year could be built on land provided by the government, under a strict set of rules.
Without delving into the rationale, or benefits or otherwise of this concept, one has to be concerned about the idea of housing being what we see illustrated in this text, and in every suburb in Australia. Why should we continue to replicate the pattern of settlement that started when white men and women arrived on our shores and decided to erect shelters? The first question must have been where?; followed by what?; then perhaps how?; with the broader idea of limits of habitation being defined by a zone, a block of land either fenced or cleared, or both: the bush was considered an alien place. Then another settler arrived and wanted to live nearby: the same questions must have arisen, but now a response to proximity was needed.
This response eventually became critical as numbers grew, so land was divided up and defined to avoid squabbles. This was the rudimentary beginning of subdivisions that has occurred ever since, and has become the staple topography for settlement in Australia.
Rarely have the concerns with this concept been addressed other than when cities required denser populations, with proximities tightening so much that the party wall was implemented, primarily as a health measure, as the slot between neighbouring walls only provided an inaccessible place for trash and vermin. In the outer suburbs, where such pressures were not obvious, the primary pattern of settlement remained, and still does, with pressures increasing as walls get closer and closer.
The photograph accompanying this report highlights the pattern: the blocks are marked out; the slab is poured; the wall framing is flicked up; the roof trusses are placed on top; the roof cladding is put on; the windows and doors are nailed in; the walls are sheeted or veneered; the plasterboard is put up; the trims installed; the joinery fitted; and the services are completed: finished – then again, and again, and again, each place only worrying about itself.
The builders are all trained using this pattern, learning how to build in this way, and continuing to teach others likewise. The idea might have been reasonable when the blocks were larger, but with the so-called ‘greening’ of the suburbs, which means narrower streets and smaller blocks, the house form has not changed. As can be seen in the photograph, proximity has become a problem - the elephant in the room. Each block is developed without thought to any other, with ad hoc collisions of purpose and function just happening willy-nilly, and having to be tolerated just for the sake of the future of the world – things ‘green’ as the blurb goes, as if all this was a benefit to everyone.
The thought of 35,000 more of these dwellings every year with this topology is frightening, as we are only building the slums of tomorrow today. The Singapore pattern of high-rise might be fine for Singapore, but Australia urgently needs patterns of settlement that respond to the functional needs and the problems inherent in suburban living that currently uses the ‘house on block’ system. We can go on and on doing the same thing, but we will only continue creating the same problems and worse, as blocks become smaller and houses larger with this pattern of singular isolation and identity. We need housing for community that is not multi-level, be this a town house, six-pack, or high-rise, approaches that are all solutions using the 'house on block' model. We merely need thought and care given to settlement so as to create ideal living places that can still accommodate greater densities. It is pure madness to continue what we have been doing since day one of our arrival.
We need new topologies that can set examples for all to follow. The silliness of builders just going on and on in the same habitual manner is leaving us with stresses of habitation that design can overcome. The frequent reference to quality denser living is the Kingo Housing by Utzon built 1956 - 1959. With so many talking about this pattern, praising it, why has nothing happened to do more with it?
We need new rules for building; new laws: we need to transform our planning visions to accommodate boundary to boundary construction to allow for proximity and privacy – perhaps two boundary walls on each block becoming the courtyard walls of the neighbour, allowing for appropriate orientation as well as good living spaces with an economy of construction. This is a known pattern, but it has never been implemented in any sizeable development in Australia. Why? Is this a planners problem; or a PR matter? Has everyone been brought up to expect their own house, on their own block, just as the first settlers experienced place? What is the problem? Is it that everyone is blind to the realities of poor design? Is there some raw antipathy to architects, who might be seen as self-indulgent and expensive? Why is good design ignored in favour of the new Australian favela? Is this acceptance really just a careless Australian trait, something like “She’ll be right mate!” - “Don’t worry about the wanker; use a bit of common sense. Architects are a waste of space; and money”? We need to overcome the concept that one only goes to an architect if one wants to spend money on something 'different,' something bespoke.
Whatever it is, the situation urgently needs to be overcome. Australia cannot be allowed to become a sprawling shambles of stand-alone houses on more and more separate blocks. If the Kingo pattern is unacceptable, then other topologies need to be explored and accepted – ASAP. We cannot continue to press on holding the primeval idea of original settlement – me and my block. We need to place far more importance on the quality of life and communal living; we need to care for ourselves and our towns and cities.
Is the market the problem, where huge values are placed on ‘desirable’ properties that are stand-alone houses on separate blocks? Is it this vision of MY mansion that is driving the desire for MY dwelling at a different quality and scale for everyone? If so, this needs to be overcome – somehow. Maybe we need to change real estate promos; the blurb that hypes hollowness into extremes of desire. We need to touch on and respond to matters involving the sensitivity and subtlety of meaning in life. With so much now being spoken about mental health, maybe we need to promote patterns of living rated for their impacts on mental health, with 10 being the max for the negative, and zero the max for the positive. Today’s topology would be 10, and should be highlighted as this.
There will have to be planning support, but planners have shown very little interest in any matter other than box-ticking and negotiation. We will need rigorous planning controls that are not negotiable; and new patterns too. It will be a good start for everything if this occurs, not just for quality housing. Our cites and towns and countryside are a shambles of ad hoc development that has all passed through planning departments that write and interpret the rules, negotiate deals, and approve outcomes. The world is not improving even though it has more town planners than ever before. Maybe planning should be abolished until it is renewed; revitalised?
So where to start? Planners and real estate would be a good beginning; but architects need to get models built and experienced so that they become to be seen as desirable. We need tight living on various scales, but this does not mean tensions and stresses. It means good design. We need people to be able to see the folly of ‘house on block’ when other better options are available. Maybe we have to overcome the idea of a house as being an expression of ME, and see it as a place in the world for shelter, for me and others yet to come: a place in a community. The envy-creating efforts of 'real estate' design need to be overcome with a communal significance that recognises others, and makes good towns and cities too.
Looking to Singapore is not a good start. We need to look at ourselves and gauge our own needs, accommodate them with our own responses; manage them with our own necessities. Why is the courtyard house such a problem? Pompeii showed how great densities could be possible with grand dwellings and modest homes – using the courtyard pattern. Kingo is a courtyard pattern. We have to get beyond the nostalgic, inherited replication of the early days of ‘house on block’ pattern that is tolerated in spite of all the issues that are becoming more stressful and intolerable both as a housing unit and as a suburb. These settlements are becoming places unfit for people; unfit for dwelling – but they continue to be constructed. It is true madness to believe that we can achieve better outcomes by continuing to do the same thing.
We have to get everyone to understand the problems and the solutions. Having that great divide between builders and architects is not useful. Builders believe architects to be ignorant dilettantes, and a waste of money; while architects see builders as perpetuating the abnormal as ‘common sense’ that has priority over what architects see as good design. That the majority of the population would employ a builder before an architect, is a concern that needs to be addressed. Perhaps simple co-operative effort might be the answer here, where mutual respect could drive opinions in the preferred direction, to the benefit of all.
The big worry is: what does one do with the current stock of ‘houses on blocks’? Our whole suburban fabric has been shaped by this pattern. Streets have been laid out for it; and services too. How on earth can this shambles be adapted, changed to make it a more pleasant place to live? Are we burdened forever with this model? Do we have to manage matters with finances, making these areas the real slums before things can change? Is the problem just too big? We need creative thinking to resolve this matter that is a complex, but not an impossible task. It can be managed, but needs vision, courage, and determination.
It will not be easy, but the approach to this mess has to start somewhere; the sooner the better, if we are to begin to address the housing problem that caused the academic to look to Singapore for a solution. The first rule must be: do not use the ‘house on block’ topography; grapple with other patterns of settlement.
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8 FEB 2022
P.S.
This text is not enthusiastically promoting the ‘Kingo’ model; it is merely pointing out one possibility that uses walls on boundaries rather than plonking the single house in the centre of a block. There are numerous possibilities for alternative patterns of development. Philip Johnson’s first house was the simplest: merely develop half of the block with walls on boundaries, with the remainder being a private courtyard.
Breaking from the ‘house on block’ model is going to be difficult. Social housing offers a place for developing new models, but the problem here is that the residents see themselves as being further isolated and branded as being ‘different’ with the new types of housing they are offered, when all they want is to fade into the community and settle down to the everyday. This problem only perpetuates the desire for the ‘house on block’ - MY house. The aim to see one’s place as the palatial mansion in the open fields, MY PALACE, only as a much smaller and cheaper version, remains a problem.
We need to develop models of housing that are desired, that become an ambition for all, so that everyone can share in the experience, and want to. One core issue here is identity: the way that the home is seen as an expression of individuality, which is a part of the ‘MY house’ syndrome, if it can be labelled as such, being the desire to make MY mark on place; to claim MY place in the world; to highlight MY individuality, my bespoke identity: ME.
Maybe our era of social media is only encouraging such deviant perceptions. Our world of commerce does not help here, where differences, dissatisfaction, and envy are encouraged so that sales can be maximised. We need to find a way to make community - similarity - desirable; acceptable. Our cities will only be improved with such an approach, not only with greater densities and better public spaces, but with a more coherent infrastructure too. One only has to look at the Royal Crescent at Bath, UK, in order to see the power of sameness as a civic maker of place. We should not fear similarities; indeed, we need to encourage them to allow us to begin reshaping our cities. Instead of the struggle to be different, we need the effort to go towards co-operation and collaboration in habitation so that we can all benefit from better spaces and places, both private and public.
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2 MAR 22
The 'haunting artwork’ highlights the problems with suburbia as we know it today: collated, itemised living.
13 MARCH 2022
While this article argues for the idea of house to be separated from that of home, it makes no comment on topography other than using an illustration of typical suburbia without comment, as though this might be satisfactory: see - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/13/we-must-separate-the-idea-of-house-from-home-the-case-for-drastic-action-on-shelter?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
27 March 22
The problems with suburban development are clear:
https://www.news.com.au/
8 MAY 2022
An unbelievable image recently published by The Guardian Australia in association with a report on housing - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/07/seven-downsides-to-australias-dangerous-property-obsession?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other:
If one considers Christopher Alexander’s statement that “life is the only worthy criterion for the construction of the environment, all building including housing and freeways,” then we have a long way to go to reach this vision.
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