A new chapter emerges from Urtzi Grau and Guillermo Fernández-Abascal’s latest experimental project. Known as the Future of Living Continued, and supported by Alastair Swayn foundation, the studio examines the visions of how Gen Z and Millennials wish to live in their home. Experimented on the site in Campsie, eleven kilometres southwest of Sydney’s CDB, the area was developed with a sea of red-bricked apartments between 1960s and 1970s. With the suburb being ‘identified as a strategic growth hub by the NSW government, alongside Bankstown, in the larger Sydenham to Bankstown urban renewal corridor where a projected 35,000 new homes will be required in the near future’ and that the well-worn apartments facing an end to ‘their functioning lives’ the duo proposes an alternative that could reduce the need for demolition while accommodating the required housing numbers.
In the second studio, Grau and Fernádez-Abascal select four building blocks deemed semi-decent before introducing their surgical-like intervention.
The proposal begins with removing the boundary fences in-between, followed by stitching of the newly formed space between the buildings with a timber typology in the centre of the four blocks. The new interstitial timber core, a semi-enclosed pavilion capped with a poly-carb roof becomes half-sunken parking with open spaces that could offer various shared- activities that include “washing, exercising, reading, gardening, hobbying, day-dreaming, bathing, and cooking”.
New steel staircases are added to mend the gap between buildings standing side by side for effective circulation between different levels and access to the common areas. Other amendments include improving the existing façade conditions of these multi-residential buildings.
With many common programs pushed to the new central building, it allows for the interior of existing apartments to be gutted and freely curated with a selection of kit-of-parts that includes “second Edition’s kitchen, Lina Bo Bardi’s chimney, Kazujo Sejima’s chair, a second-hand rug, a timber column, a solar panel or a water pipe” as seen in Charles Choi’s visualisation. Street-facing facades are renovated with a timber frame to provide a balcony or winter garden for each level, improving the quality of living and thermal performance. An additional roof is added above for another level of occupancy—as the architects explained “(the) new timber structures aim to provide the most generous space possible in a modest manner. These new constructions increase density while making the financial operation for the refurbishment of the four buildings viable”.
Where master planning is constantly pinched and moulded to accommodate growing population changes—Grau and Fernández-Abascal implore different thinking of utilising the existing resources. A simple shift in the mindset of everyday living and function by using “built extensions, concepts of repair and maintenance, and changes in legal frameworks and financial models” perhaps we don’t need a mass sweeping change in suburbs—but small changes that can create a lasting and positive impact.
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