Hamish Rickard

My Project ‘House at Werrington’ was designed around finding the middle ground in the current housing market in Australia, and Sydney specifically. As the subject being studied was called 'Rethinking the Sub-Urban' the focus on my project was to create a house located in Werrington, that was suitable for a young family, looking for their first home to bring up their family. After looking into the key demographics of the Werrington and Penrith areas I choose this demographic to design for, as I believe it best fulfils the middle ground of housing inequalities and the dream of home ownership, and the idea of the 'Australian Dream'. The design originally followed the idea of a terrace house, having two separate dwellings located next to each other, with a courtyard space, and single garage space each, however, the addition of a third dwelling located above the rear garage spaces allowed for the problem of the current housing crisis to be addressed, with the overall maximisation of the site to allow for more housing in the space. Therefore, becoming more closely associated with a manor house design, in the end my design includes one four bedroom dwelling, one three bedroom dwelling, and one two bedroom dwelling, all with sperate living spaces, bathrooms and kitchens. By including a central courtyard it allowed for a partly private and communal area for the occupants to use. Including private decked areas with herb gardens and seating, along with a communal lawn, overall connecting to the garages and lane way. House at Werrington overall offers solutions to several problems facing us at this moment, including the housing crisis and finding the middle ground in our housing, but it does more than that, it creates dwellings for people who are currently being left out, and shouldn’t be.

Hamish Rickard

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Acknowledgement of Country