Small
The tiny house movement is proving that, for many people, living smaller is possible.
People in the majority world have demonstrated the uncanny human ability to do much with very little.
Neither of these options may be a desirable norm, but they should at least prompt us to take stock of how much space we take up. And of the things that take up the space.
... are a pain to clean.
Enough said.
We don't really do high-rise around here. The ground's too shaky. So we tend to sprawl instead, building new commuter towns.
But we hate commuting, and like our rural landscape. So we're having a crack at densifying.
Urban densification to combat suburban sprawl.
We seem to be struggling to make it work though.
Maybe it's because we're still trying to fit a quarter-acre 240 sqm house, lifestyle and expectations into a smaller footprint.
If we built smaller and lived closer, we'd share more.
Share more space, and connect more often.
Pick up a property. Demolish the building. Rebuild what was there, but better, and make more spaces for more people.
A crucial piece of the puzzle of trying to transform a neighbourhood, is how to get hold of the land in the first place. The Nightingale 3 project in Melbourne took the above approach, you can read about it here.
But how about suburbia? We don't have the option of taking a single-storey building and adding space by building up, but could we take a similar approach? Could we find four connected titles, demolish, and rebuild with eight households?
It could be possible if we used the following principles:
More shared spaces: Shared laundries, storage, workshops, maybe even ditch the cars and use a fleet of electric vehicles.
Smaller spaces: Design for what we really need, learn to live with less, and just generally do bette design.
Common ownership: Whether it is a body corporate, a company structure or some other legal delight, sharing more requires a shift from a 'my house, my castle' property mentality.
Energy efficiency: Environmental considerations aside, this is a smart financial move. Keeping running costs low not only makes a higher build cost/mortgage affordable, it provides longer-term financial security by making living costs less tied to market variations in energy costs.
Around here, a typical section could be around 600 sqm. Four sections would give us 2400 sqm to play with.
I'm sure an architect could come up with an 8-household development using the principles above on 2400 sqm, even if we're limited to two storeys.
Imagine what our neighbourhoods would look like if we rebuilt from scratch.
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