ABSTRACT
The Melbourne version of terrace housing starts a discussion of ‘small groups’ of dwellings, being built all at the one time by small-scale, private developer-builders. Although each dwelling sits on its own plot of land and no formal sharing of space occurs, the physical configuration of volumes on long skinny lots resulted in the passive sharing of light and air through mirrored setbacks and shared light courts, to mutual benefit. In the 1960s and the decades following, another small group typology emerged in the next ring of suburbs where small apartment blocks of two to three levels became possible and developers soon came up with a highly efficient building type yielding ten to twelve apartments on a single house site. These buildings were known colloquially as ‘six-packs’, often resulting in poor outcomes with open space dominated by cars.
A new design project reinterpreting this six-pack typology is undertaken with the starting premise being that a different type of apartment living can be offered to those with limited mobility, who spend more time at home and for whom quality of internal and private external space is arguably more critical. If this model could be made affordable and achievable within current regulatory and financial limits then it would also offer alternative suburban apartment typologies relevant to others in the wider community, such as small families or a range of contemporary, non-nuclear household structures.
