SCALE: THE FORGOTTEN CONCEPT

January 2022

Scale is one of the most important aspects of architectural design. Unfortunately it is also one of the hardest to understand and tame. Australia’s residential design in recent generations has seen a regression in the application of scale at numerous levels and has prompted some alarming trends to arise consistently.

These concerns around scale became evident on a recent self-guided tour in the Melbourne bayside suburb of Beaumaris - an area renowned for its rich concentration of mid-century residential houses. The design success of the area is largely thanks to the built environments timeless appeal. This mood is unfortunately slowly being inundated with an evolving array of residential projects that are eroding away the idyllic setting. The inability to adequately design and integrate the concepts of scale is behind a large portion of these issues and the trend only seems to be getting worse.

Scale can be assessed at several different levels. The most fundamental for residential design being the literal size of the house itself in both brief and plan. The overall massing of an Australian home has skyrocketed in recent generations with Australia now having the biggest average house size in the world - a title we interchangeably share with the United States at around 235 square metres. This number has increased from around 100 square metres in 1900 and 165 square metres in 1985. Alarmingly this number is counterintuitively growing whilst the average Australian household occupancy has dropped from 3.6 in 1961 to 2.5 in 2020.

Housing sizes have naturally increased due to changing mindsets around the adequate sizes of certain functions, most notably the size of kitchen and bathroom areas. This does not however account for the dramatic increase in housing sizes that we have seen. Contemporary houses are now typically larger than they fundamentally need to be and lack the creativity of previous eras to utilise flexible spaces. It is now common practice that every perceivable function is given its own dedicated space - leading to the blowout in housing sizes.

The concerning outcome of this trend is that housing footprints have grown to now fill the whole block - eliminating important connections with the exterior areas of the site. This link to the landscape and street was a hallmark of what made the mid-century houses of Beaumaris so successful and is an attribute that should not be underestimated for its positive benefits to its occupants. It is understandable that not everyone can afford both a house and a yard, however the decision to build an unnecessarily large house at the sacrifice of any meaningful exterior space is a decision that needs to be further regulated. We need to ensure that we do not invest generations of wealth into housing stock that we will regret.

Contemporary projects generally need to further prioritise the exterior spaces as an element that improves not only the connection to landscape but also the interior spaces that link to these outside areas. It is rare to see a new volume-built house that is not some iteration of a rectangle, which limits potential connections to the desirable north and east aspects in Australia. A renewed focus on the exterior spaces in the massing of houses will inherently improve the quality of housing and lead to a greater diversity of forms and more interesting streetscapes.

Architectural design has increasingly become a specialty for the rich. The majority of houses being built in Australia are the product of volume-built services with minimal unique design input. Given the momentum behind the surge in house sizes the ability to engage architectural services has never been further out of reach for the regular prospective homeowner.

Contemporary housing in Australia have undoubtedly improved in many areas, such as their building envelopes (insulation and double glazing). Nonetheless a lot of other aspects of mass housing across Australia is getting worse which can be largely attributed to the prioritisation of size over quality. Sadly the volume-built design process today focuses on what they are getting and not how and why it is being achieved. Such conversations have lead developers to base their efforts on the cheapest possible outcomes.

The enlargement of scale is also being seen at the wealthy end of the market, where the projects have the ability to achieve the trifecta of quality design, large briefs and exterior activation. These houses are typically beautiful pieces of architecture, but seem to inherently lack the charm of the projects that are able to achieve the high levels of design at more humble scales. Smaller architectural projects are crucial case studies for how more modest budgets can achieve high quality architectural outcomes by scaling back the footprint of the designs. A renewed focus on smaller homes can demonstrate to the wider market that there are benefits in activating the exterior spaces of the house and the importance of timeless crafted materials. These are items that need to be more prioritised to ensure the focus does not continue to trend towards excessively sized houses.

The materiality of contemporary volume-built projects tends to exaggerate the immense size of the projects. Common material choices such as thin composite panels give little inclination of the spaces beyond and scale of the overall form. The hand-crafted nature of more traditional materials like brick and weatherboards were able to achieve this quality much more effectively. These elements allow the mid-century projects to age gracefully and remain a valued piece of the built environment – a characteristic I fear many contemporary projects will not achieve.

The longevity concern of contemporary projects is influenced by the poor construction methods and techniques that are growing in alarming density across the volume-built housing and apartment buildings in Australia. Commonly used techniques like rendered cement sheeting exterior cladding often result in mouldy, streaked surfaces that are easily cracked and broken over time. It is important that we reverse this trajectory and reinforce the importance timeless building techniques that lead to better long term outcomes. These decisions are a sad reality of contemporary projects that needs to be rectified to ensure we do not regret a whole generation of this nations building stock.

The recent visit to Beaumaris highlighted the concern around the trends in contemporary residential design in Australia. The success of humble, crafted dwellings of the 1950’s and 60’s that were gracefully curated is sadly a capsule of a bygone era. As both a profession and the general public there needs to be a renewed focus on the size and craftsmanship of housing. The concept of scale is one that came naturally with the humble handmade works of the houses before the 1980’s. As design briefs, procurement methods and construction materials have evolved in recent generations these aspects of scale have been eroded to the detriment of the built fabric in Australia. Hopefully through a renewed focus on these elements we can begin to rectify the current trajectory and help improve the residential projects of the future.