Resilient Housing for the Northern Rivers
report
posted on 2025-07-31, 03:24 authored by Martin BryantMartin Bryant, Elizabeth MossopElizabeth Mossop, Adam RussellAdam RussellResearch on the role of landscape as part of housing design, addressing the problems with affordable housing supply in flood affected Northern Rivers.<p></p>
History
Related Materials
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Publisher
Living Lab Northern RiversPlace of publication
Lismore, NSWPagination
1-73Research statement
Research background The research explores the design of affordable and flood-prone housing that addresses not just the house but also the landscape that surrounds the housing. It is a design research project, centred on the Northern Rivers, which experienced catastrophic flooding in 2022, and where site-responsive approaches to 'housing and landscape' can offer comfortable, pleasant, affordable, adaptable and more resilient outcomes. It is critical of architectural pattern books that usually isolate housing design from context, critical of business-as-usual housing because it is unaffordable in current markets, and critical of imported housing practices that ignore the knowledge of Indigenous people. Instead it builds upon operational relationships of house and landscape expressed in works by Anita Berrizbeitia and Linda Pollak (Inside Outside), Paul Memmott and Alison Page (Design: Building on Country), Carol Burns and Andrea Kahn (Site Matters), and Anna Johnson and Richard Black (Living in Landscape). Research contribution The work includes designs for five locations in the Northern rivers. The findings original contributions are ⁃ A methodology for Connecting with Country through ‘house and landscape’ design. ⁃ A 'leading with landscape' reframing of the traditional architectural 'pattern book’ format. ⁃ A methodology of mapping and measuring housing so that it includes landscape. This alternative way of architectural representation offers housing a new way of seeing the role of landscape as an indelible part of living. ⁃ A thesis on the characteristics of landscape (such as thresholds, identity, infrastructure, and materiality) that can inform housing to be designed to be more flexible, compact, accessible, place-based and materially appropriate, and thereby contribute to housing quality and affordability. ⁃ A recognition of the significance of using regional locations to experiment with housing opportunities, as a precursor to addressing housing problems in bigger cities. Research significance The work was financed by the Reconstruction Authority's contribution to Living Lab Northern Rivers. The financing covered the cost of multiple housing experts who offered a number of perspectives on housing to the design researchers. The work is the keynote subject to be presented by the first named author at a symposium in June 2025, convened by the Committee for Sydney and the Government Architect of NSW.UN Sustainable Development Goals
- Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
