Review Michael Keniger Photography Richard Stringer
With government, clients and students, Clare Design generates a sociable and rational model for public and private housing in Queenland’s climate. It is galling for the profession to be continually reminded that it commands such a small share of the housing design market, particularly when the design quality of so much speculative development is indifferent at best. With notable exceptions, public housing has also been diminished by ineffective design which stigmatises occupants and reduces the quality of their environment. When introducing Lindsay Clare at a recent talk at Tusculum, Lawrence Nield emphasised this point by stating that “so often public housing is about equal misery rather than opportunity and life enhancement”. In recent years there has been a substantial change of attitude to the procurement and design of public housing in Queensland, through the efforts of the Department of housing, Local Government and Planning (now Public Works and Housing). Key players within the department redirected its focus towards appropriate design, siting and fit with context, and increased the engagement of architects to drive the design process. Designs that answered specific regional needs and characteristics have been encouraged and supported by several initiatives, including a workshop on the design of tropical housing. One of Queensland’s more successful regions in housing design is the Sunshine Coast and its hinterland. Here there was a strongly expressed concern that conventional development models were failing to respond to the particular needs of coastal locations. This was matched by a growing realisation that the rapid pace of change and the dramatic increase in residential development threatened the qualities of the many seperate and distinct towns along the coast. In 1992, three forums were held with representatives from the community, local government, the professions and the development industry, to investigate the potential of providing affordable housing that was socially, environmentally and aesthetically relevant to the region. With the support of the Sunshine Coast Regional Housing Council, an exploratory project was conducted by fifth-year students of the University of Queensland under the direction of Peter O’Gorman and with the assistance of Lindsay Clare. This work culminated in a report, Places of the Coast, that argued the need for designs founded on a sensitive understanding of location and for neighbourhood identity to be reinforced through character, scale, material and form. Separately from these studies, it was agreed to construct a pilot project at Cotton Tree, Maroochydore, on the two adjacent, linear parcels of land investigated by the students. One of these properties was privately owned while the other was owned by the public housing authority. Both owners commissioned Lindsay and Kerry Clare to design housing for their separate needs which enabled the two projects to be governmed by a single planning and design strategy. This entailed the realignment of the dividing boundary to form two approximately square blocks which made possible the retention of an important stand of mature paperbark trees and gave each block a more useful street frontage. Such a collaboration between the public and private sectors is unusual and was largely due to the willingness of the private owner to defer development to ensure that the full potential of the two blocks was achieved. The commitment of the department was crucial to the design’s acceptance by the local housing authority and enabled equivalent standards of space, construction and detail to be achieved in both the public and private parts of the scheme. Consequently, it is difficult to discern the public housing from the private as they are unified in material, form and detail. From a distance, the belt of melaleucas registers as a strong, large-scale element in the landscape and helps to diminish the visual density of the development. The articulation of form and the reduction of scale towards the north further enables the housing to merge with its setting. This is assisted by the light-coloured or self-coloured sheet cladding of fibre cement and corrugated steel. These elements, and the composition of the housing into house-like blocks, acknowledge the restrained vocabulary of the existing fibro beach houses still to be found at Cotton Tree. The scheme provides seven two-bedroom units and one single-bedroomn unit as the private component, with six single-bedroom units, three two-bedroom units and two three-bedroom units forming the public housing. This mix relects the growing understanding that demographic changes have created a substantial need for single-person accommodation. The equivalence of the mix of unit types and sizes in the two parts of the scheme is due to the private client wishing to build a village-like development to house his extended family. The dwellings are deployed as an interlaced mat of freestanding blocks, car courts, courtyard gardens, patios and decks. This enables a relatively high density of 65.3 dwellings per hectare to be achieved without exceedign three storey and with considerably more environmental quality that the conventional development types in the area that are generally of a lower density. A consequence of this strategy is that buildings and spaces are inevitably overlooked by their neighbours, with a reduction in visual and aural privacy. This is of less concern in those spaces that capture the line of melaleucas and will be helped to some extent as the planting becomes more established. The key distinction between the public and private parts of the scheme is the pooling of the car parking spaces in the public housing to create a shared courtyard. This could have been more generous if a slightly lower density had been acceptable and the single storeyed unit to the north of the car court had been excluded; thereby opening the space to the northern sun in winter. The necessity of bringing the residents’ cars deep into the site causes difficulties by reducing the privacy for those that overlook car parking from either part of the scheme. The housing climbs to three storeys on its southern edge and falls to a single storey on the north-western corner. this enables all units and the principal private outdoor spaces to have a northern orientation. The interiors of both the public and private units are skilfully arranged to take full advatage of views, light and breeze. Detailing of joinery and fitting is of a high standard throughout and is matched by a surprising spatial generosity, despite the constrained size of the dwellings. Overall, this project represents what can be achieved through the cooperation of public agencies and private owners with the assistance of purposeful and informed designers. Its success lies not just in terms of the quality of the environment provided for occupants but in the example it offers for future coastal housing development. As a pilot project, it warrants thorough evaluation so that the experience of its residents can strengthen and inform the design process for both public and private housing. It is the culmulative effect of exploratory projects such as this that ultimately will improve the quality of housing and so serve to broaden the impact of architectural design on housing as a whole.
Michael Keniger is Head of the Dapartment of Architecture at the University of Queensland. COTTON TREE HOUSING, SUNSHINE COAST, QUEENSLAND
Architects Clare Design—Lindsay Clare, Kerry Clare, Jeff Lee, alan Rogers, Scott Chaseling, Terry Braddock, Troy Zwart. Engineer McWilliam Consultants. Builder Peter LeCompte. Developers Department of Public Works and Housing (formerly Housing, Local Government and Planning) and Chris and Gwen Beecham. | 
