Bangs Street, Prahran by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects

As of March 2025, the waitlist for public housing in Victoria has grown to over 55,000 households. Simply 2.8 p.c of the state’s complete housing was social housing, rating the bottom in Australia and trailing the nationwide common of 4.1 p.c.1 There may be little debate in regards to the scale of answer required, however the respective roles for private and non-private actors are topic to ongoing debate.

The Bangs Road public housing renewal demonstrates one potential path ahead. The challenge is a part of the primary section of Housing Victoria’s Floor Lease Mannequin (GLM), a public-private partnership technique that goals to ship mixed-tenure property regeneration whereas sustaining long-term public possession of land. Working carefully with a improvement consortium chosen by means of a aggressive course of, Jackson Clements Burrows Architects (JCB) has delivered a dense city precinct of 434 new dwellings (comprising 228 social and 206 market rental) to switch 120 public housing items within the inner-Melbourne suburb of Prahran.

Nonetheless, this can be a challenge which offers way more for its group than simply properties. A brand new community of lanes and arcades stitches the island web site into the encompassing context, delivers new high-quality open area for the broader neighbourhood, and incorporates a variety of group and energetic makes use of to generate public life. Mixed with the custodianship of the group housing supplier Group Housing Restricted (CHL), the challenge affords plenty of important classes for the following era of property regeneration.

In a political setting the place the market remains to be seen as king, and the place the availability of social housing has skilled a protracted trajectory of decline – from the formidable Victorian Housing Fee of the post-war years to the narrowing of scope, funding and accountability from the Nineteen Seventies onwards – Houses Victoria’s GLM shouldn’t be evaluated in isolation as a step down from the gold customary of publicly led property regeneration, however as a major step up from the sale of estates to personal builders. It alerts a constructive shift away from more difficult non-public supply approaches, like that of the “Kensington mannequin,” which sought to unload estates to builders who would ship non-public properties to cross-subsidise a marginal enhance in social properties. It was later closely criticised for a scarcity of constructive socioeconomic mobility for residents, and poor social integration between owner-occupiers and social renters.2

The GLM, in distinction, employs a 40-year lease which permits a public-private partnership that attracts upon the teachings from a longtime mannequin of funding public infrastructure. Function-built, non-profit consortiums, comprising improvement, group housing and design companions, compete for the unique rights to develop a number of properties as a single funding, reaching an financial system of scale. On the finish of the lease the buildings revert again to public possession.

Bangs Road is considered one of three estates to be developed below the primary GLM program. Bangs Road is on a protracted, skinny, rectangular web site, sandwiched between an incrementally reworking industrial space to the west (throughout Bangs Road) and a nineteenth-century residential space to the east (throughout Bendigo Road). The typology, fencing and landscaping of the property’s earlier housing, constructed within the early ‘70s, divided the neighbourhood, restricted public motion by means of the positioning and created unsafe areas. These dwellings had been demolished in 2020, after mendacity vacant for a decade following an earlier failed redevelopment proposal. When the design crew commenced the brand new Bangs Road challenge, solely a set of serious timber remained.

A porous property

JCB’s design technique from the earliest section of the bid concerned a dedication to “no lifeless ends” throughout the precinct, making certain the finished precinct would really feel open, porous and linked into the encompassing community of streets and open areas. A central, resident-focused pedestrian lane kinds a brand new north–south group backbone for the challenge, offering a heavily-planted area protected against automobiles, with entry to entrance doorways and sight strains by means of the precinct. Blind corners and unsafe lifeless ends are eradicated totally. This backbone is complemented by a sequence of direct and offset east–west lanes by means of the block, inviting the general public in and stitching seamlessly into the Metropolis of Stonnington’s Mount Road panorama masterplan (Tract Consultants). This ensures a connective city setting which, in time, will join by means of lanes and pocket parks from Bendigo Road by means of to the Chapel Road retail strip and past.

The lane community is anchored by two new inexperienced open areas totalling virtually 5,000 sq. metres, with a central courtyard forming the center of the event for group gatherings, and a extra passive garden area to the north. These areas maximised the moment impression of present timber, whereas a intelligent basement design wraps the western fringe of the courtyard, defending present timber and establishing beneficiant new soil areas.

Massing, range and tenure blindness

Regardless of this porosity, Bangs Road remains to be a strikingly dense improvement as compared with its surrounds, although the variation in constructing heights tremendously improves the sensation of spatial generosity. The first massing of slab buildings alongside Bangs Road rises from six to 9 ranges within the south, with a 12-level level tower to the north, and a low bar of dual-aspect, three-to-four-storey residences and maisonettes going through Bendigo Road. The size crescendo of the tower feels comfy in its open-park setting and offers much-needed skyline range. Whereas the road interface feels a little bit cliff-like on the slender Bangs Road, a two-metre panorama setback mixed with mature avenue timber helps soften this considerably, and the decrease scale to Bendigo Road brings mild into the central backbone.

The design crew explored a variety of different schemes to satisfy the event’s temporary for separation between social and personal tenure buildings earlier than selecting an alternating “A-B-A-B” distribution technique. This ensures that social properties can’t be visibly distinguished from market housing. The framing of the central courtyard with each social and market properties is one other key success that has efficiently introduced the 2 tenant communities collectively.

Architectural range is achieved throughout tenure utilizing a palette of stained concrete finishes and brick tiles that convey a patina that softens the dominantly precast concrete buildings. In a closely cost-constrained context, JCB rigorously drew from tones of the encompassing residential setting to humanise the concrete kinds and add variation over the extremely seen facades. Easy, repeating steel parts present depth, whereas offset home windows, projecting shades, and planter and window bins present moments of pleasure. The dedication to concentrating design effort in areas most skilled by pedestrians is commendable.

JCB director Tim Jackson factors to the important function of design overview by the Workplace of the Victorian Authorities Architect (OVGA), which guided and empowered the design crew all through the method. The ambitions of the crew to open up the positioning with lanes and obtain design range had been additional inspired by the course of the OVGA, providing alternative to redistribute yield throughout the envelope. This layer of design scrutiny embedded throughout the GLM course of was important each within the evaluation of the consortium bids and in advocating for a excessive customary of design by means of to completion.

Built-in administration

In distinction with earlier Houses Victoria initiatives that present solely housing, Bangs Road incorporates an artist residence and studio, a business tenancy, a toy library, a group kitchen in partnership with Domesticate Group, and a mobility hub with shared e-bikes supplied by Kola Bikes. These areas are positioned onto key open areas and laneways to maximise the connection between the resident group and broader public.

Rooftop gardens are supplied within the northernmost (non-public) and southernmost (public) buildings and co-located with indoor communal rooms, which CHL group improvement supervisor Kate Daddo notes are a important success for kids’s play, fostering group formation. Throughout my go to, residents additionally overtly shared their love of the rooftop gardens, the function of the shared areas and the relationships they’ve shaped inside and throughout buildings in solely a brief time period.

The function of CHL has been integral right here, and exhibits the transformational potential of an engaged custodian and group curator when in comparison with older approaches just like the Kensington mannequin. With an on-site presence and an energetic function in bringing collectively native companies and companies, CHL has empowered the usage of shared areas at Bangs Road and explicitly inspired an energetic, engaged group by means of occasions organised within the well-designed third areas. Early outcomes are promising, with vital cross-tenure and wider-community participation.

Victoria has a protracted strategy to go if we’re to handle our vital social housing shortfall, and this may require a variety of presidency and partnership fashions of supply. It’s clear that Bangs Road, as a challenge and as an early experiment throughout the GLM, has set a brand new bar for mixed-tenure improvement on public land. The alignment of private and non-private curiosity has created the preconditions for JCB and its challenge companions to execute a beneficiant, open precinct, with everlasting social properties of a excessive customary in a extremely linked city location.

— Andy Fergus is a Melbourne-based city designer, design advocate and committee member of City Design Discussion board. Andy collaborates with authorities, moral builders and group organisations to allow the supply of profitable locations.