2022 National Award for Residential Architecture – Multiple Housing

Jury citation

An exemplary scheme in its spatial nuance and neighbourliness, Anne Street Garden Villas is an exquisite offering to the typology of community housing. Through a material and architectural language steeped in ancient ideas of domesticity and society, the enclave of villas possesses a sense of autonomy that can be seen in the traditional freestanding home, but with the added dignity of communal life and shared gardens.

The planning is fine-grained, with thresholds, gardens, plinths and terraces ordering the social terrain of the site. The built volume steps up from the street to preserve scale at the frontage and rises to two storeys at the rear. Sensibly, cars are kept to the side and a court is established at the centre of the site, offering a communal biophilic garden at the heart of the community.

The detail and spatial tone of Anne Street Garden Villas are executed with considerable finesse, with private rooms care- fully grouped to subtly demarcate communal gardens. Economical materials are used in myriad ways – as furniture, screens and edges that set the scene for the public and personal life of the residents. The architectural empathy of this project contributes to its importance as an exceptional and timely exemplar within this typology.

— Anne Street Garden Villas was reviewed by Kirsty Volz in Architecture Australia September/October 2021. Read the review here.

Project credits

Architect Anna O’Gorman Architect; Project team Anna O’Gorman, Paul Violett; Builder Nano Constructions; Hydraulic engineer H Design; Structural and civil engineering, stormwater management Westera Partners; Landscape consultant Lat Studios; Town planner Bennett and Bennett; Mechanical, electrical and fire engineering Ashburner Francis; Quantity surveyor Rider Levett Bucknall

Anne Street Garden Villas are in Southport, Queensland on the land of the Kombumerri people of the Yugambeh language group.