You have to be bloody brave to stand in the way of a development in the middle of a housing crisis.
And if you’re part of a profession charged with putting people into homes you might even be called crazy. People needs homes, not hands held up and cries of “halt!”
Such was the leap taken by Fremantle architect Mark Zuvela when he stood in front of a city council meeting and made an impassioned plea for members to stop a housing development in its Knutsford precinct.
Taking a stand: Fremantle architects (left to right) Mark Zuvela, Emma Williamson, Matt Delroy-Carr and Jennie Officer in front of the Locus’ Monument East development. Credit: Mark Naglazas
Zuvela argued that a proposal for 55 units on the corner of Amherst and Stack streets (dubbed East Monument) was generic, inward-looking instead of facilitating community engagement and out-of-keeping with an area that has become synonymous with innovative medium-density housing.
Zuvela worried for weeks before making a deputation to the City of Fremantle’s planning committee meeting last September. Is this what an architect should be doing, wondered Zuvela. Did he really want to tell a fellow design professional their work was not up to scratch?
“I’ve been on the other side of the fence when community members expressed concern about something I was trying to get through, so I’m sympathetic to the development team,” says Zuvela, who is an associate at Christou Design Group.
“So I am not anti-development.
“It’s rare for architects to get involved in stopping a project – architecture is not an aggressive profession as we tend to get pushed around rather than assert ourselves – but I felt this case was too important to simply let it go through without comment.”
The City of Fremantle agreed and refused to sign off on the project, as did the Joint Development Assessment Panel.
The refusal of bodies to rubber stamp the project sent the company behind Monument East, Locus Group Development, to the State Administrative Tribunal for mediation, kicking off a mind-boggling cycle of submissions and rejections and resubmissions.
The Monument East development: the group opposing the project don’t want the design to be dominated by the motor vehicle.
It was during the battle to force Locus to rethink East Monument that Zuvela discovered he was not alone his disappointment with a development that would land an entire community in the middle of this cherished corner of Fremantle, which has been evolving into one of the most interesting mixed-use neighbourhoods in the metro area.
Equally appalled at what they saw on paper were fellow Freo architects Emma Williamson and her partner Kieran Wong (The Fulcrum Agency), Matt Delroy-Carr (of MDC Architects), Jennie Officer (Officer Woods) and Dimmity Walker (spaceagency), as well as DesignFreo founder and creative director Pippa Hurst.
Amazingly, all the members of the action group live within 500 metres of the Knutsford site.
“This area is a hotbed of architects and other design professionals,” laughs Zuvela when I sit down with him and several members of the group at the cafe within Stackwood, a converted warehouse used by a number of different business (including Williamson and Wong’s practice) and typical of the mixed-use philosophy of the area they are fighting to preserve.
Williamson says she and the other members of the group are not simply forcing their tastes and design philosophies on Monument East.
They simply want the developer to abide by the Medium Density Housing Code that has been hammered out by members of her profession and embraced by councils and the state government.
“We know the important role that medium-density housing will play in curtailing Perth’s unsustainable urban sprawl. The new design codes have been put in place to ensure that we get quality developments that will endure for the coming decades,” says Williamson, who is the convenor of the group.
“For example, the double-car garages as the main frontage for a house has been taken seriously by the government because it knows they don’t build communities. The new codes require that the garage take up no more than 60 per cent of the street frontage.”
The multi-award-winning Knutsford is just one of a several in developments in the Fremantle area that are now a benchmark for medium-density design.
Officer says diversity is not simply about the number of bedrooms being offered, which is what is being trumpeted by the developer.
“It’s about providing a variety of living spaces for people at different stages of life and different work-life arrangements,” she says.
“There’s a plan that runs across this whole site developed by the community over the last 20 years that talks about the importance of mixed-use.
“It allows for people being able to run businesses from home and having workspaces within houses that could allow for that.
“Diversity might also be about smaller houses on bigger blocks of land to allow for much more urban canopy and landscape and pets and those sorts of things.
“It might also be about houses that are joined together, on top of one another, have cars on the ground plane, are buried, have external terraces and are upside-down.”
The group all agree that the developer didn’t have to look far inspiration as the area is brimming with examples of great medium-density design, such as the multi-award-wining The Knutsford.
“The Knutsford represented a shift in thinking that Perth needed,” Zuvela says.
“Its emphasis on community, on outward-looking properties and creating active streets showed us what can be achieved in medium-density housing.
“If we let this go ahead it will set a precedent that setting a lower standard is OK. It’s a wasted opportunity.”
Locus Development Group director Damian Long says that many of the issues identified by the City of Fremantle, JDAP and the Knutsford group come from the difficulties posed by the site, which had remained undeveloped for over 10 years since rezoning for mixed use.
“Most building sites in Perth are flat. In this case, there is a 14-metre fall from one side to the other,” Long says.
“While some of the feedback has been great I don’t think there’s been enough acknowledgement of the challenges of the site and, more importantly, how much implementing those suggestions would add to the cost.
“We adopted a design that targets a lower-entry point into the area for young families and downsizers.
“Our critics want more costly, bespoke-style homes while we were aiming for a consistency that is cost-sensitive and achieves shorter building timeframes.”
He was trying to deliver a home that was more aligned to what potential homeowners were after and what the property market needed.
Diverse design that responds to the surrounding area and encourages community-building need not be expensive, according to Williamson and the other architects who last week walked me around the 10,000-square-metre site.
“We are aware of the demand for development and the need for housing. But it is all about getting the balance right. Our agenda is not to have award-winning design but good design that can be implemented as quickly and cost-efficiently as possible,” Williamson says.
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