Why the cookie-cutter can’t solve Sydney’s housing crisis

Pattern books are the NSW government’s latest idea to address the housing crisis. They want standardised designs for townhouses and small-scale apartments to be pre-approved to speed up local council consent. The designs are likely to be instrumental in the recently announced “transport-oriented designs” and “missing middle” developments, and the NSW government architect has just launched an international competition to find the best options.

An older take on the pattern book: the terraces that dominate many Sydney suburbs.Credit: Louise Kennerley

At first glance it looks an attractive idea, given the long tradition of universal designs for terraces in the 19th century and project homes in the 20th. But some serious problems will become apparent, including the reasoning behind their reintroduction, whether the idea is valid for larger buildings, and whether the project can succeed given a wide variety of sites.

A driving force for the proposal is the state government’s increasing impatience with approval delays and refusals by councils, which it sees as fiefdoms controlled by NIMBYs. The government would love to usurp the powers of approval, but is not willing for that fight, so it wants to develop a code, a State Environmental Planning Policy, or SEPP, that overrules each Local Environmental Plan, or LEP, in the 50 urban councils.

A similar SEPP, the Complying Development Code (CDC), currently allows duplexes and “manor homes” (small blocks of three or four apartments) on single residential sites. Popular with “mum and dad” developers, the code is hated by councils, which decry their loss of control over design compliance.

There are salutary lessons in the cat-and-mouse game that has played out, as councils seek loopholes in the CDC SEPP to prevent the approvals. They rezone whole suburbs as heritage conservation areas, where the SEPP can’t apply, or increase the minimum lot size for subdivision to make the projects less financially attractive.

Nevertheless, the CDC has been successful in the middle-ring suburbs, much to many councils’ chagrin. Expect similar “war-zoning” for pattern books.

Apart from the politics, are pattern designs a good idea? One view sees the very idea as a professional insult by codifying and then dispensing with the key skill set that architects bring to their projects: creating individual solutions to individual problems. A mass-use product cuts across the grain of creativity, allowing developers to bypass architects, using standard designs, which can be rolled out wherever, creating a plethora of cookie-cutter solutions that will degrade the suburbs, leaving councils and their communities infuriated.

Another view argues that standardisation of buildings could help drive down costs, promote prefabrication and improve sustainability. In this scenario, the pattern-based building would still need to be sited and adjusted to its context, which is work requiring architects and landscape designers, while the original architect of the patterns is paid a royalty.

Either way, will pattern designs work? There are three big stumbling blocks: first, the complex modern technological regulations, then the huge variety of possible sites, and finally – and crucially – can the designs accommodate the diversity of our multicultural population?

Houses and terraces (class 1 dwellings) in old pattern books had very limited code requirements to meet, whereas apartments (class 2) have very demanding design codes. Fire safety, structural adequacy, thermal performance, orientation and shading, car parking, accessibility and many more requirements are crucial considerations that constrain medium-density housing. Finding a pathway through those tortuous controls to establish standardisation will require some design deftness.

Siting larger buildings can be troublesome as there are at least six variables to consider: size and shape; topography; orientation in aspect (sun) and prospect (views); landscape (geology and vegetation); context (street, vehicles and neighbours); and services (electricity, water, sewer, stormwater). Mathematically, there are thousands of variations. In practice, every site is unique.

How many patterns will be needed to accommodate all those regulatory and siting variables, let alone design variations desired for differing occupants? Certainly, no single design – nor the six called for in the competition – will suffice. A book with an almost infinite number of designs is needed, which defeats the purpose.

The only useful patterns will be a wide variety of internal plans, giving many opportunities for designers to create patented patterns. Beyond that, it will require architects to undertake the critical work of siting and context. While the architect’s anxieties could be assuaged, ultimately the whole idea of patterns is fraught with limited usefulness, and it won’t reduce the assessment times.

A far better approach would be to turn the issue on its head: codify the problem, not the solutions. That is, develop far more precise design controls for every site by using 3D envelopes to establish key issues such as privacy and overshadowing. Stay within the envelope and approval is assured; stray outside and take a ticket for the Land and Environment Court.

Tone Wheeler is president of the Australian Architecture Association.

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