Jury citation
Lost Property is concerned with the loss of accessible public housing through government sell-offs and the redevelopment of aged housing stock. This alternative proposition explores strategies to retain, restore and reuse existing buildings.
The project reconsiders the Abbotsford Street public housing estate in North Melbourne, currently under redevelopment, to suggest an alternative. The existing conditions – including entry, surveillance and security, and shared and private spaces – have been assessed and reconfigured with modest tweaks and more significant interventions that cater to the housing needs of women in particular, while achieving contemporary and inclusive housing, relevant to all.
The jury was impressed by the simplicity, warmth and lightness of touch in the key moves that underpin this proposition. The retrofit embodies civility, community and amenity. It demonstrates the potential of such a regeneration strategy to breathe new life into older social housing estates – which are too often dismissed as past their use-by date – as well as their communities. Lost Property provokes a rethink of current policy and practice.
Architect’s description
Lost Property is concerned with the privatization of public housing. As a counterfactual “What if?” project, it explores strategies to retain, restore and reuse existing buildings. It interrogates the original site conditions of housing on previously government-owned land, which was home to an established community. Lost Property identifies women over the age of 45 as the fastest growing group at risk of homelessness and explores conditions of threshold, surveillance and security to seek outcomes that cater to the housing needs of women.
Alongside this, the project seeks to uproot housing from its commodity base and underscore it as a universal right for all, grounded in its rawest purpose. With shifting development models, the language around public housing has also shifted to fall under “social housing” – which, in many cases, refers to privatized community housing.
Lost Property asks: What is the purpose of a house? What makes a house a home? Can we explore development models that resolve the current public housing crisis? How can we think of ways to keep communities in their homes, or ways to adapt and renew existing public housing with a perspective to review, rediscover, revitalize, reinvent or reuse?
With a community of women as its primary tenant, Lost Property seeks to reconceive public housing from a set of universal needs, prioritizing its amenity and benefit as a basic human right founded on a series of first principles.
