Living in 5m

Design Future, Townhouse Design, Building Design,
Edithvale Discovery Center, Australia

This project proposes a town house located in Footscray inner city Melbourne which has an area that is growing rapidly. The main theme of this project is to maximize and extend the space between private, commercial and public space within existing urban space. The question for design is how to make compact, flexible and multifunctional space to suit the medium density of inner urban living.
Footscray precinct is a rich mixture of Australian, Vietnamese, Chinese and African backgrounds, combined with the 19th century Victorian and with postmodern architecture. It is characterized by a very diverse, multi cultural central shopping area, which reflects the successive waves of immigration.
The case study ‘machiya’ has completed initially to understand urban density living. The machiya house evolved over hundreds of years to suit the lifestyles of Kyoto. Typical Machiya houses have been built very closely to each other and walled up both sides forming long and narrow building shapes due to the high density population.
The process of design development is to identify characteristics of Machiya through different typology. Both taking advantages of Machiya principles and considering different type of family in Footscary, 4 types of modular units with courtyard have been developed for the proposed site. The proposed design demonstrates how to make efficient use of limited space. The hypothesis Urban density and green space can be compatible and medium density space which creates instinct atmosphere providing intensive cultural characteristics - is possible by providing more sense of expended space, containing green space, and encouraging local communication. It will create more vital, attractive, sustainable and safe town centres.