In the spirit of the Griffins’ plan for Canberra and houses built last century for public servants, a national competition will foster a pattern book drafted for missing middle homes in the national capital.
In 1912, Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin famously won an international design competition to transform 3000ha of mainly sheep paddocks into Australia’s bush capital.
Then, in a high-growth era for that capital after World War II, many homes for government workers were built according to a pattern book. Hundreds of those houses, including ones affectionately known by Canberrans as “govies”, remain today in the city’s inner and middle-ring suburbs.
Now, through a national competition, the Australian Capital Territory government is inviting architects, designers and architecture students to contribute to a new pattern book.
The idea is to provide designs for homes in Canberra to fill the gap between single houses and highrise apartments that afflicts many cities and is otherwise known by urbanists as the missing middle.
ACT planning and sustainable development minister Chris Steel said the pattern book would provide top quality, sustainable and affordable designs that could be built without the need for a development application.
“Much of Canberra was built on pattern housing,” he said.
“With the government focused on housing supply, we’re taking that old Canberra idea and making it new.”
The national competition is seeking designs for dual occupancies, tri-occupancies, townhouses and terrace houses.
The pattern book is intended to be a compendium of designs for sustainable and affordable homes that could move through a streamlined approvals pathway.
Steel said that winning designs from professionals would be developed into patterns that could ultimately be built in the ACT. He said two student winners would receive a monetary prize.
The govie is revered by many Canberrans, with the red brick versions that were built in the 1960s and 1970s epitomising the simple and repeatable architectural style.
