$800 a week for that? The battle for better apartment design

Every time I get close to quitting X, a post pops up that hooks me back in.

The latest was delivered by Australian comedian Rose Callaghan, and it referenced an article about the thousands of new apartments in Melbourne that developers have been unable to sell.

“Anyway this 2 bedroom apartment is $800 a week,” she wrote, above an image of a room that completely belies reason and price.

The crux of the post was a jab at developers who, through the guise of increasing supply, build spaces that feel virtually unlivable and unaffordable, all while keeping their profit margins high.

One argument is that beggars can’t be choosers. In a housing crisis, can we really complain about an asymmetrical bedroom that you can’t really fit your belongings in?

For $800 a week, yes.

Plus, I think we should be interrogating the contempt that developers feel for people in need of housing when they dare to execute such a heinous space.

There are plenty of times throughout my housing career when I’ve found myself wedged between finding an ideal living space and the desperation of having somewhere to live.

I’ve always rejected one-bedroom apartment listings that show bed, kitchenette and toilet in tight proximity, but I’ve lived in plenty of apartments.

And while I prefer a detached house, I know that if I ever want to buy a home in Brisbane, I’ll probably have to downsize my ideas.

The federal government wants to build 1.2 million homes over the next five years, many of them apartments.Credit: Courtney Kruk

It’s a reality that Brisbane is grappling with broadly. We’ve held on to the Australian ideal of a home with a backyard for longer than Sydney and Melbourne, but as our population grows, we have little choice but to embrace mixed density.

Census data from 2021 shows 60.2 per cent of all dwellings in the City of Brisbane were separate houses. High density accounted for 21.4 per cent of dwellings, and medium density for 17.8 per cent. The latter figures will nearly certainly grow after the next census in 2026.

The question then becomes: what makes a well-designed apartment?

The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute says good apartments have the same qualities as well-designed homes, and they’re comfortable places to occupy.

What is a well-designed apartment?

According to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, good apartments have the same qualities as any well-designed home:

• they create a sense of place and belonging
• there is adequate daylight and opportunity for natural ventilation
• there is enough space to carry out all the normal activities of daily household life, as well as storage space and access to outside
• there is adequate privacy (both visual and acoustic) but also the opportunity to connect with neighbours when residents choose to, and the chance to enjoy some form of outlook.

Social enterprise organisation Cities People Love looked at how apartment design policies affect design quality and, in turn, the health and wellbeing of apartment dwellers.

Their study measured the implementation of 96 design requirements that could plausibly affect health, from policies in NSW, Western Australia and Victoria, and across 172 buildings in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne.

They found residents who felt more positive or satisfied with the design of their apartment had higher mental wellbeing, “with the strongest evidence for natural ventilation, summer-time thermal comfort, indoor space and layout, and communal space quality in the apartment building”.

While I wonder how the “unsellable” Melbourne developments might fair against the study’s metrics, plenty of Brisbane proposals come to mind.

Last year, billionaire developer Harry Triguboff unveiled plans to build twin towers on Alice Street overlooking the city’s botanic gardens, adding more than 1000 units to Brisbane’s CBD.

Replies to this masthead’s story conveyed the cynicism felt towards this style of apartment living. “Very bad feng shui living in one of those places,” one reader commented. Another replied: “Nothing says welcome like a thousand overpriced concrete chook boxes.”

Of course, Meriton’s twin towers sit on the more extreme end of density. An “apartment” could also be a unit in a six-pack, like the blocks that dominate New Farm.

A few weeks ago, I did a walk-through of Canvas, a luxury three-storey apartment building in Bulimba designed by architecture practice Bureau Proberts.

With Canvas, Bureau Proberts tried to design an alternative to the traditional Queenslander home.Credit: Bureau Proberts

They turned the site of two old warehouses on a 1600-square-metre block into 21 apartments, or – as Bureau creative director Liam Proberts describes it – “a 21-pack”.

Canvas mimics the advantageous qualities of a detached home and builds on the philosophy that good design, implemented by architects and developers, can make apartment living more desirable.

“These were specifically designed for people to live in, rather than what often becomes a rental or investment property,” Proberts says.

“To do that, you need to have a sense of place and identity ... because you want to feel at home.

“We were taking back the qualities of Queensland living, where people are used to a backyard, and translating it into apartment living. It’s a home alternative.”

A three-bedroom Canvas unit sold last year for $2.2 million, having previously sold for $1.9 million in 2022.

I can’t afford it, or a house. But I respect the good design philosophy and, unlike the unsellable Melbourne apartments, the developers’ desire to create something people want to live in.

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