RADAR COMPETITION BUILDING DIVERSITY

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Philip Goldswain reviews the outcome of a recent ideas competition for new models of socially diverse housing.The ideas competition offers a rare opportunity to publicly articulate the speculative potential of architecture. As part of the Building for Diversity National Housing Conference, the Department of Housing and Works and the East Perth Redevelopment Authority proposed such a competition, which sought to investigate, within the process of urban renewal, new models of socially diverse housing.
A frayed piece of urban fabric, denuded as a result of the Northbridge Tunnel project, was chosen as the site for conjecture. This site is in an area of urban transition, between a monocultural “entertainment precinct” and disappearing light-industrial and emerging residential fabric. It is bound by Newcastle Street to the north and a proposed twelve-metre-high car park to the south. The demanding brief specified hostel accommodation for single men, and community housing to be determined by the entrant.

An existing single-storey heritage building was to be integrated into the retail and commercial mix at ground. A response to demographic and urban shifts, as both architectural and habitational phenomena, was fundamental to the competition.

_In their commended scheme, Antarctica Group propose a more radical interpretation of these typologies and prioritize the building’s role as an urban-scale object.

A projecting canopy and a void in the built structure create a public space, a vertical and horizontal chamfer to their version of the perimeter apartment block. This two-storey void is the location for weekend markets or the over-spill of the adjacent cafe. In the building, this “public corner” is manifest as the communal lounges that link the wings of the hostel accommodation. The building proposes a nicely ambiguous relationship with the urban condition – the block’s articulated canopy engages with the setback and form of the remaining built fabric, while the perimeter block veers away from a direct connection with the street.

The four-storey walk-up apartment building is understated in the entry’s presentation.

Its modularity allows a variety of planning arrangements, while the highly rational planning promises future adaptability and flexibility. The proposed limiting of on-site parking means that Antarctica was liberated from dealing with the spatially hungry concerns of the car. However, the resulting courtyard between the buildings is rendered unconvincingly and the walk-up’s sunken private gardens seem unappealing.

The thoughtful response of both the profession and the academy to the challenges of the brief gives a small glimpse into the possibilities for the terrain vague of our cities. In addition to these architectural and urban propositions, the careful consideration of the spaces created for people on the margins of society reveals an interest beyond the merely formal.

Hopefully the success of this exercise will prompt the organizer and sponsors to propose future experiments that offer young and emerging practices, such as the ones acknowledged in this competition, the opportunity to implement their ideas in built form. PHILIP GOLDSWAIN IS A LECTURER IN ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA.