The rear of the new addition to Atherton Gardens public housing on Brunswick St as seen from King William St.
legoland
18 July 2012 | 7 Comments
18 July 2012 | 7 Comments
The rear of the new addition to Atherton Gardens public housing on Brunswick St as seen from King William St.
18 July 2012 at 7:18 am
We love looking at this from our loungeroom window. Proof that public housing doesn’t have to be grey and boring.
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18 July 2012 at 4:05 pm
Amazing! absolutely love this part of Melbourne, it never gets boring :)
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21 July 2012 at 9:07 pm
Yes, it’s very colourful, and the building fronting Brunswick Street is nicely detailed and imaginatively articulated. I question why it is appropriate or necessary to use such glaring primary / secondary colours for public housing, though. What about giving the residents the choice up front? It’s rare to see private owners / renters making the decision to finish their residences in this way – why would residents of public housing feel any different I wonder? Perhaps the loveliest public housing project ever conceived is Hundertwasser House in Vienna, in which tenants ‘can lean out of their windows and paint anything within arm’s reach’ (see ref. below). While it’s great to see some decent architecture being deployed for public housing locally, the bright toy store colours seem almost, well … paternalistic to me.
Read more: http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Austria/Bundesland_Wien/Vienna-320332/Things_To_Do-Vienna-Hundertwasser-BR-1.html#ixzz21Fnyvwvk
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21 July 2012 at 9:29 pm
Property owners, in this case the state government, develop their properties as they choose (within the boundaries of planning laws). A modern design was evidently planned, approved and built. Why should public housing always be boring?
Regardless, why would prospective tenants be given a say? And how could you do it anyway when the waiting list for public housing changes all the time as people’s situations change?
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21 July 2012 at 9:46 pm
Well, I would tend to agree – public housing, or any contemporary building for that matter, should not be boring. I guess what I’m saying is the back of this building bores me somewhat – I think the architects could have produced something more beautiful and fitting for such an important site. How could tenants have a say? The Hundertwasser building I mentioned solves this issue by establishing a set of architectural ‘guidelines’ for prospective residents. For e.g. – anywhere you can reach within the length of your arm outside your window(s) you can decorate or paint as you please. On a large multi floor building, the effect of a simple rule like this can be spectacular, with mosaic tiles, mirror, timber, paint (of all / any colours), etc. being employed to great effect within the boundaries of this ‘frame’. To me, that is truly inventive public architecture. There may be other ways of achieving this sort of involvement of residents, but this one stands out in my mind as a great success.
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22 July 2012 at 9:48 am
“It’s rare to see private owners / renters making the decision to finish their residences in this way”
I don’t know if I agree that private owners don’t tend to make such decisions. If a private owner living in the inner city attempts to put forward a planning proposal along these lines they are often met with rejections based on standard council responses (from the relevant planning scheme) such as this one:
“To conserve places of aesthetic, archaeological, architectural, cultural, historical, scientific and social significance which reflect Yarra’s historic development.”
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23 July 2012 at 7:44 pm
Atherton Gardens looks wonderful tonight with the projections on them..Only wish it could be like that 365 days per year!
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