‘Beautiful to look at and wonderful to live in’: new pattern designs could be next art deco or red brick classics

Airy Scandinavian interiors, shaded balconies, light-filled courtyards – could these be Sydney’s next art deco apartment blocks or red brick walk-ups? The New South Wales government has launched nine new mid-rise apartment building pattern book designs, which it hopes will support the construction of 112,000 homes in the “missing middle” over the next five years, through its controversial low and mid-rise (LMR) reforms. Sign up: AU Breaking News email The designs, among the winners of the government’s pattern book design competition, come after the release of eight low-rise home drawings in July. The mid-rise apartment designs unveiled on Monday range from three to six storeys, including four designs for small lots, three designs for large lots and two designs for corner lots. The cross-ventilated and energy-efficient pattern designs from leading Australian and New Zealand architectural firms can be purchased for $1,500 for smaller lots to $2,500 for large lots for the first six months. That’s about 1% of the typical cost of an architect’s plan. After six months, the cost will rise to about 10%. Sydney has a history of using pattern book designs to speed up construction, from the Georgian terraces built by early colonial settlers. On Monday, the NSW planning minister, Paul Scully, acknowledged the city’s history of mid-rise housing, including the “much-loved” art deco and red brick walk-up apartment blocks. Redevelopment in Sydney is seeing the erasure of some of these older designs, including in the inner west. Scully said there would be “evolution and change in our cities as a matter of course”, but pattern designs allowed more homes to be built “sympathetically with the size and scale that people like to see”. The mid-rise designs require a development application to be submitted to local councils, but the government says it has provided guidance to councils that will help them halve the average assessment time. The government says new planning reforms, which passed parliament this month, will “enable an even faster and simpler” pathway in the new year. Scully said the low-rise designs had been “highly sought after”, and 17,000 had been purchased for $1. It was unclear how much of this was genuine interest, but Scully said proposals were starting to come through the planning system. He said supplying the larger, mid-rise pattern designs would take longer. The NSW government architect, Abbie Galvin, said the patterns had been designed to suit permissible sites, of which 85% are 20 metres or less in width. “That also means no larger developments that take a long time to deliver,” she said. The NSW premier, Chris Minns, said the designs would help respond to a recent NSW Productivity Commission report finding that young people were leaving the city in significant numbers. “Last year, we lost 45,000 young people interstate,” he said on Monday. “A lot of people in Sydney went: ‘Well, look, we’re open to the idea of apartments and units in our suburb, but I don’t want it to look like some of the examples that we’ve already seen’. “The onus is on us, builders and architects, to design buildings that are going to stand the test of time, are beautiful to look at, wonderful to live in, and obviously service that most urgent of needs.”