A communal housing project situated in Brunswick West. Periodicity is in reference to its rationality and efficiency of layout, while relating to the inhabitants’ ‘period’ of stay and temporal characteristics of ephemeral interiors and free form scheme: a Periodic City.

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While nearby high-rise apartments are also efficient in their use of space, equity is ultimately compromised. Experiential interiors are sacrificed for tessellation, and the sense of neighbourhood is stifled by opaque thresholds. Activity, and therefore community, is invisible.

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There is a solution in undefined housing. Like an inhabitant’s stay may be temporary, the home should be equally ephemeral in plan. The unit could suggest modularity through rationalism and standardisation while being random to a highly individualised extent, through large sweeping or sliding doors, askew neighbouring duplexes, or collapsible partition walls. These spaces are typical, balanced and efficient.

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The site set out should be opportunistic as it welcomes those through the thoroughfare and branches so obviously into homes and communal areas. Courtyards segment the community into focused groups, intensifying communal living without compressing it. Let the natural environment fill the gaps.

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There is no designation of communal space - spaces are made communal and collaborative through nearby actions of a collective with a common determination (e.g., a communal laundry is only communal through the actions of inhabitants with a common goal: to wash their clothes, or a communal garden is only communal when other people are obliged to use it). Facilitate activity without designing it. These spaces are obvious, imbalanced and askew.

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In extension, a route is the ubiquitous communal space since it has purpose, is used by all inhabitants and visitors and builds physical connections between places and people. The route is intuitive, and therefore destructive as it is at odds with immovable objects like buildings. An integration of the route and the building creates ultimate expression of activity public, private and in-between, crucial to the fostering of a vibrant community per this project’s goal. The living neighbourhood is sustained by the incidental as much as it is satisfied by the programmed.