Modelling scale
Team D’s proposal Small Wins
Team D members were Emily Van Eyk, Jessica Mountain, Matthew Delroy-Carr, Serena Pangestu, Anika Kalotay and Megan Buckland
Members of Team D, responsible for the proposal Small Wins – Emily Van Eyk, Matt Delroy-Carr and Megan Buckland – speak to Daniel Jan Martin about the importance of scale in creating livable design.
Daniel Jan Martin: Scale and coordination have been the most interesting themes explored in the Place Value Ashfield project. We started with multiple lots – mini suburban precincts – and a suburban strategy. By coordinating medium-density housing strategically, teams have demonstrated how they can strengthen the public and landscape realms to support density, orient it to parks and open space, and retain tree canopy and the permeability of the ground. How important was scale in your team’s approach – both in a design sense and through ‘economies of scale’?
Emily Van Eyk: Financially and throughout our design thinking, it proved to be very important. We had an opportunity to challenge the site-by-site process that has produced so much of the poor infill across Perth. The potential for good design and urban outcomes really goes up when you have scale on your side. You can consider how things go together – you can consider a more holistic outcome. Scale made shared spaces more viable – there are a range of uses – creating intimacy and community across the communal areas.
Megan Buckland: Yes, and it also proved that you need scale to make it feasible. We did a few models on less yield and we struggled to break even. We definitely needed scale. Particularly where the underlying land value is modest, if you don’t get the yield, you will pay the price in quality. The sale price for some of the units in our development was under $300,000 – that’s where it was tricky – construction cost versus sales price.
Matt Delroy-Carr: It allows design intelligence, for sure – and works in theory – but it also comes down to demand. The expectations of floor area in infill housing is the great challenge. It seems to always come down to size of dwelling – scale in another sense.
MB: You’re asking the market to trade off land for something a lot smaller, where they also have to pay the strata fee.
MDC: Medium density is an intangible thing for many, until it’s finished. A lot of that stems from the big off-the-plan builders, the land developers.
EVE: The design might be better, but like you say, you’re paying strata fees, you’re getting something smaller and you’re not getting land.
MDC: It comes back to this question of incentivising good development by reducing buy-in costs. How can there be some benefit to the buyer which isn’t just about a good quality outcome and good livability?
DJM: Yes, we have this system here that completely prioritises lot-by-lot thinking, as you say, and with it the model of the ‘house’. How do we confront something so entrenched?
EVE: Yes, it’s the battleaxe block [an L-shaped block behind another block, accessible through a drive or lane]. People still see that as better value.
MDC: Because within a battleaxe you can still fit a ‘house’, as the market thinks of it.
EVE: Exactly. Even if you end up with 1-metre set-backs on every side.
MB: It does come down to value propositions.
DJM: Perceptions.
MB: Yes – perceptions of what is good value.
MDC: I often have this exact discussion with cli- ents. They find it really hard to grasp why they would consolidate their garden and reduce the scale of their building. The outcome will inevitably feel better, but people won’t easily let go of numbers. “Another builder is going to build me this for this much at this big. But you’re going to do that for that much and it’s 40 square metres smaller?”
MB: The market is trained to think in terms of quantity over quality. However, as Perth matures, the number of people wanting to downsize will increase and there may be a shift to smaller and higher quality.
EVE: Yes, quantity is one of the only design tools the public has, isn’t it? And it’s easy to market.
DJM: So if we scale up further, if we take the whole of Ashfield as all our design teams have imagined it, do you anticipate significant shifts – that margin becoming greater?
MB: Yes, if we take more of a master plan approach, you can coordinate and offer bigger-picture controls – preserving particular trees and areas. Everyone can address the bigger volume precinct.
DJM: It’s very interesting and the potentials do open up. Having the Department of Communities here is helpful – a single public landholder owns 25 per cent of lots in Ashfield. This presents the opportunity to coordinate and implement a better approach. These scenarios and their possible potentials are repeated throughout Perth.
MDC: If communities are willing to integrate the strategy and work with us to conceive it, it’s great. Spreading infill through a suburb so it still reads and feels like a suburb. But the lack of strategy at a government level is a big problem. EVE: The approach we took in Place Value also assists at a psychological level, where infill emerges throughout the suburb – density emerging slowly – connected to the parks and suburban character, so it feels more at home.
DJM: Your scheme, Small Wins, is very interest- ing, because when you think of the breakdown of costs in medium-density projects, it can be a case of many small wins to make up the whole. What are the pinch points you encountered when you were going through your design pro- cess in Ashfield?
MB: In our scheme, we located visitor parking on the verge. Where we have large verges and services are easily accommodated, this becomes a viable option to free up developable land.
MDC: Given that every car bay is bigger than your master bedroom, however many visitor bays there are is how many beds you’re losing, or how many trees.
EVE: Parking is also such a large development cost. It doesn’t just occupy a lot of land, but it is a very costly part of the construction. Policy could really lead here: for every car bay there has to be a tree or two or more retained or planted. Everyone would win from a policy like that.
DJM: That would be a ‘big win’, even?
MB: One of the other teams brought up the density bonus system for keeping trees on the site. That’s a great idea and could be easily supported through policy and assessment process.
MDC: The accumulation of all the small wins is why the big off-the-plan builders are so successful, because they’ve got a formula and a template for everything to work – it’s such a quick process and it’s easy, it’s marketable. Which is why [the] Nightingale [development] in Melbourne is working, because it’s got a structure – it demonstrates a value increase and cost reduction to buyers. I think it’s a strategy for getting everyone on board so you only have to do it once, rather than repeatedly.
EVE: I have clients that will say, “We really need four bedrooms and we need a second sitting area”. You ask why, and they say, “We’ve had advice that its worth doing because it will add so much value”. I think the market knows what it wants, but when it comes to pulling the wallet out and getting the loan, people are being driven by other forces and that determines what they think they have to get and not what they actually want.
MB: Bank valuations are largely based on how many bedrooms, bathrooms and car spaces you have. That’s where a big problem emerges, so when talking about ‘value’ we can’t forget about the ‘valuers’.
DJM: Yes, you only need to open the pages of the nearest West Australian to see the impact of these exact metrics of ‘value’ right across our urban fringe. Not to mention plans void of north points – it doesn’t matter which way they face.
MDC: Yes, you just spin it and wait for it to stop!
MB: Then, you mirror it!
EVE: We’ve got to prove our product. We can tell you it is better, but until you prove it, until you see it, then it’s just business as usual. And no investor will take that risk on board.
DJM: That’s an important point. How do we work on this market literacy from the ‘bottom up’? Only a few good examples of medium-density housing exist in Perth. How can the market value something it can’t see or experience? But what would it take for a developer and a government agency, say the WAPC or Department of Communities, to sit down at the table and get on board with a demonstration project, in Ashfield? There is no lack of design schemes; there are plenty of typologies. The issue is that we haven’t demonstrated their development potential here in Perth.
MB: Yes, for a new idea to have market penetration it must be repeatable. The benefit of partnerships is the shared risks, which can assist with innovation. We come back to scale. For developers, repeatability will be key, and there are many benefits to partnerships between designers, developers and government.
DJM: And it’s precisely about finding these intersections. What have you all learned from bringing ‘design’ and ‘enterprise’ together in this project?
EVE: That the partnership is completely fundamental.
MB: I don’t think you can do one without the other, if you want a good and realistic outcome.
MDC: Economics and design can drive intelligence, quality, resourcefulness.
