NSW Housing Pattern Book
Led by the Government Architect NSW, the NSW Housing Pattern Book aims to accelerate the development of high-quality, affordable and sustainable housing in NSW, with architect designed housing patterns available for anyone to use.
Officer Woods were selected as a winner of an international competition seeking the best ideas for a Terrace Housing typology, specific to a nominated site and with the ability to develop into patterns for scalable, replicable application over a variety of sites, orientations and topographies. .
A demonstration project for this model is currently being developed and will be built in Sydney.
Our project, the ‘Unfinished Finished’ Terrace Houses, aims to be highly resilient from design, through construction, to occupation. Every terrace house is north facing, all purposefully exposed and coupled to outlook, sunlight, air and greenery, with high site porosity and an informal openness which embraces and complements suburban life.
The design leaves room for growth and adaptability, inside and out, so that character and usefulness can be extended into the future.
A key organisational strategy for the terrace houses is the coupling of internal and external living areas: evenly sized, full width, easily traversed. This indelible coupling positions the character and disposition of each dwelling, sets their bearing and ensures their equity.
We contend that coupling of living areas and northern orientation should be given the highest priority on all sites - that what they provide in terms of perpetual, free, sustaining thermal benefits should be properly valued - and that the life of both the houses and the street, their safety, character and reciprocal civic qualities will be enhanced, not diminished by such an approach.
Each house is designed to be simple and effective; simple to build and easy to occupy, with a space of delight – the living area –providing propinquity to garden, drenching winter sunshine and a volume not normally associated with affordable housing.
The occupation of a pattern book dwelling and the occupation of those dwellings in streets and cities is not yet started, and may never be finished. We hope that there will be many occupations, that the houses support multiple lives, and that the helpfulness of the pattern is finished a long time in the future.
Project info
Project Name: Housing Pattern Book
Project Type: Competition, Housing, Urban
Client: Government Architect of New South Wales
Location: Varied, NSW
Completion year: 2025
Recognition
Winner, Terrace Housing Type,
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