Architecture Australia

Ask architects which Australian magazine they choose to read or to publish their work and the answer is most likely Architecture Australia. If you want to be up to date with the best built works and the issues that matter, then Architecture Australia is for you. Its commissioned contributors are independent, highly respected practitioners, architectural thinkers and design commentators and each article is supported by images from leading architectural photographers. Provocative, informative and engaging – it is the national magazine of the Australian Institute of Architects.

An architect in society

Revival of the suburban dream?

Architecture Australia

Rory Hyde

The suburbs on their own terms • Within the deceptively simple typology of “the suburbs” exists infinite complexity and possibility. Rory Hyde makes the case for listening to residents – experts in living – and finding new ways to develop these areas that are ripe for reinvention.

Case studies: The future of suburbia? • We know that our approach to suburban development needs to change: we must achieve greater residential density, sustainability, affordability and diversity. But what visions do we have? And do they fulfil citizens’ requirements? The four schemes included here offer different and creative design ideas.

John Ellway • Just south of Brisbane, Twin Houses offers a new response to its low-density postwar context, providing amenity beyond the individual dwelling and contributing generously to the suburban microclimate.

Development WA • Close to Fremantle, a collaborative experiment in medium-density housing, led by Western Australia’s land development agency, seeks to subvert traditional suburban development by offering a diverse range of climate-responsive dwellings alongside community amenities, green spaces and a commitment to energy and water savings.

Harrison and White • In executing stage one of a masterplan for Lilydale High School, Harrison and White dignifies the suburban and the modest while also alluding to Melbourne’s broader architectural culture.

The suburbs as they are, and could be • Much of the dispersion we’re seeing in our cities has less to do with the pandemic than with underlying shifts in technology, environment and culture. It’s time to radically re-imagine suburban Australia, argues Dan Hill, by using new technology to reinforce the idea of the suburb as a shared condition and nature as something of which we are part.

Footnotes

Necessary work: Reorganizing space for equality • US-based urban historian and poet Dolores Hayden has studied experimental ways of living from the past. In designing for today’s suburbs, she believes that architects need to understand the new networks of care now in operation and the complex economic, social, gender and demographic needs of the urban population.

Between, beneath, beyond and before: Individual houses and suburban conflict • Having explored the outer suburbs of Australian cities, David Neustein and Grace Mortlock argue that the increasingly hot and unpleasant conditions are a result not of the design of each dwelling, but of a development regime that begins by clearing the land of native vegetation.

Indigenizing practice: Taking too much • Yuin Budawang woman, landscape architect and artist Kaylie Salvatori understands the appeal of the suburbs. But she laments the trade-offs generated by our human-centric approach to development and is working to help built-environment professionals design with Country instead of against it.

Recalibrating new suburbia • It is time for radical creativity – to reactivate the suburbs to reflect how people truly live their lives. In his quest to uncover the new suburbia, post-pandemic and possibly post-car, Simon Sellars is inspired by John Gollings’s surreal images of...