On placing value
Six multidisciplinary teams of architects, developers and landscape architects worked on the medium-density infill housing proposals. Image: Loren Holmes
A suburb-wide landscape framework was developed to improve the public realm, as density would increase under the Place Value Ashfield proposals.
Kate Hislop and Daniel Jan Martin
The pairing of design and enterprise takes shape with medium-density design research in the Perth suburb of Ashfield.
Future West (Australian Urbanism) looks towards the future of urbanism, taking Perth and Western Australia as its reference point. In looking forward, we acknowledge that this magazine is published on Noongar land, and that Noongar people remain the spiritual and cultural custodians of their land, and continue to practise their values, languages, beliefs and knowledge.
Over eight issues, this publication has asked: Are there clues to be found in the west that can inform better urban development in the west, around Australia and elsewhere in the world? This final issue extends the research into ‘design enterprise’ commenced in issue 7. Design enterprise is a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to shaping a sustainable, resourceful and engaged architecture and urbanism in Western Australia. It is underpinned by an acknowledgement that the pairing of ‘design’ and ‘enterprise’ have a complex but influential legacy in Western Australia. The region of Perth has long been a place of enterprise: evident for millennia in Noongar culture across the region, and a key force in European colonisation. Enterprise, economy and resourcefulness have shaped Western Australian urbanism and design indelibly.
Resourcefulness is a feature that has long been associated with the design of WA’s built environment. Looking back, it is clear that the European histories of settlement in WA have typically favoured explanations for the evolution of built form according to themes of both austerity and excess. Austerity is restraint and simplicity such as that found in much colonial and postwar architecture, for example. Excess refers to waves of abundance – urban development flowing from economic boom times. The extraordinary remaking and erasure of heritage in Perth CBD in the wake of mineral discoveries is one such example. The sprawl of the region into a phenomenally biodiverse hinterland is another. Gold, nickel, iron ore: WA has been built quite literally on the back of mining as well as lucrative sales of land.
The intersections or overlaps between these seemingly paradoxical themes – austerity and excess – might be found in the shared value of resourcefulness. There is a certain pragmatism that goes with this: WA’s makers seem always to have had an awareness that the stakes are high when it comes to design enterprise, and have acted with level heads.
In continuing the focus on design enterprise, issue 8 centralises the notion of ‘value’, unpacking the nuances of the term to take in value as an assessment; an economic benefit or motivation; and a principle that has ethical, social and cultural dimensions. Alongside this is the equally central notion of place as an action, a location, a status, an identity-giver. Place is, after all, the focus of Future West.
In this issue, we ask how a pairing of design and enterprise might allow creative resourcefulness to influence the values and forms of tomorrow’s environment through the research project Place Value Ashfield, which explores a coordinated approach to medium-density infill housing in the developing Perth suburb of Ashfield. Infill housing has been done poorly across Perth – there has been a blindness to so many values. The emphasis in Place Value came to be on how to support housing and the landscape in which it is situated – the civic and ecological realms of our suburbs.
Place Value explores the importance of placing and coordinating the often competing and misunderstood aspects of value in our city, suburbs and housing. It brings together the urban disciplines – architecture, development and landscape architecture – in productive collaboration, with input from community and government authorities. Acknowledging that the ongoing densification in Perth has resulted in many poor environmental, public realm and architectural outcomes, the project aims to demonstrate an alternative: an approach to infill housing that encompasses the design, enterprise and landscape realms. The project explores an expanded idea of value, going beyond value in monetary terms to include cultural, community, environmental, movement and suburban value.
In examining the issue of medium-density housing, Place Value stands on the shoulders of many others in Perth and the rest of Australia who have examined better approaches to infill housing. These include Geoffrey London, who has been involved in this issue nationally for several decades, with the Office of the Government Architect in both Western Australia and Victoria, and with the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities; Nigel Bertram at Monash University and NMBW Architecture Studio; and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), which developed the dispersed and coordinated approach to infill housing in a Melbourne context, tested in Ashfield as part of the Place Value project. The project has benefited immensely from the guidance of Geoffrey and Nigel. We also acknowledge the work of the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC) based at the UWA School of Design. AUDRC’s work on greenspace-oriented development, and alternative models of infill housing under the ‘Freo Alternative’ developed by Anthony Duckworth- Smith, have each informed medium-density design research and practice in Perth.
2020 was an extraordinary year in which to undertake the Place Value project. It developed alongside Design WA, the suite of design policies led by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage to centralise good design in all development; a medium-density policy is imminent. This was the context in which our ideas about the Place Value project emerged and developed. And of course, in 2020 the world changed. 2020 brought into sharp relief the urgent need for responses to the climate emergency and a global pandemic. These circumstances have spawned a surge in future-thinking commentary, design, education and action, and have expanded the context of and crystallised our values-based approach to the Place Value project.
While the project brief and the teams were formed prior to the COVID-19 lockdown across Australia, much of the work was undertaken during isolation. There was a moment when we considered putting the project on hold; however, design teams were keen to continue. Teams comprising architects, developers and landscape architects worked together through various digital platforms to consider, develop and refine their proposals for the Ashfield sites. Coordination has emerged as both the critical challenge and opportunity – not only between disciplines of design and enterprise, but between government stakeholders. The Department of Communities and Town of Bassendean will together be important players in shaping the future of Ashfield.
The ‘shovel-ready’ planning reform launched in WA and elsewhere as an economic response to COVID-19 provides further scope for placing the kinds of considerations explored by the Place Value project front and centre. With evidence around the globe pointing to a shift to suburban areas and even further afield to regional nodes, the clever and sensitive design of medium- and higher-density development within and outside of city centres will likely be the focus of the next decade. In this context, coordination is critical. How can we respect and work with existing values in our urban environments, rather than erode them? Resourcefulness, sustainability and community are going to be key considerations for the planning, design, adaptation, conservation, inhabitation, enjoyment and durability of our regions and cities.
