WPI Older Women’s Housing Project
This review was originally published in Architecture Australia magazine in March 2022, alongside photography by Rory Gardiner. The theme of the issue was 'designing for dignity: beyond compliance, towards empathy'.
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In the last year, home prices in Australia have grown at their quickest rate since 1989—almost eleven times faster than wages.¹ Fuelled by upsizers, downsizers, and ‘changeover’ buyers, the pandemic property boom, which flickered to life amid an uneven COVID-19 recession expected to compound women’s lifetime economic disadvantage, has worsened the crisis of affordability for those already locked out of the housing market.² This crisis is often framed as a form of generational conflict. But as property windfalls are passed down, access to homeownership is at risk of becoming ‘hereditary’.³ It is older single women who are left most vulnerable. Longer life expectancy, increased divorce rates, the burden of caregiving, and lower savings and superannuation—the legacy of a persistent wage gap, workforce absences, and casualised employment—combine to create a perfect storm of housing insecurity.
Recognising that housing stress is a deeply gendered issue, Women’s Property Initiatives (WPI; formerly the Victorian Women’s Housing Association) was established by a group of volunteers 25 years ago to provide secure and affordable homes for low-income women and women-led families. The organisation now oversees an expanding network of long-term, supportive rental accommodation—some owned, some managed on behalf of development partners—for women at risk of homelessness. In 2013, WPI began to explore a scalable model that could address what it identified as a significant gap: women over the age of 55 with enough savings to leave them ineligible for social housing, but who were unable to access a mortgage or purchase a home outright. Forced to deplete their savings in an increasingly unaffordable and precarious private rental sector, these women effectively ‘aged into poverty’.
Older Women’s Housing Project, 2022. Photography © Rory Gardiner.
Eight years later, WPI’s Older Women’s Housing Project is taking shape on a quiet side street off the Princes Highway in the outer Melbourne suburb of Beaconsfield. The four-unit pilot, designed by Studio Bright, was originally conceived as a shared equity scheme. But, owing to the struggle faced by many older women to contribute financially beyond an initial lump sum, and the fact that even partial property ownership precludes low-income earners from receiving Commonwealth rent assistance, WPI had to pivot in the run-up to purchasing the site with philanthropic support in 2018. Future residents will now invest $150,000 each through a loan agreement with WPI, which reduces the level of debt required to deliver the development. In return, they will be offered an open-ended lease, with rent capped at 30 percent of income and adjusted as their circumstances change (including retiring onto a pension). Should a resident decide to exit the project, her loan will be refunded in full with interest, preserving the value of the initial investment.
There is an echo of history in Studio Bright’s modest infill approach on what was previously a nondescript suburban block. The villa unit was originally devised by real estate agents and small-scale developers in the early 1970s, speculating on the emerging demand for low-cost, low-maintenance housing for an older generation, many of whom were widows or divorcees. This typological DNA is evident in the linear subdivision, shared driveway access, small private courtyards, and primacy afforded to parking. The design is characterised, though, by a palpable care for the small, human touches that will transform these spaces into homes. Individual units gain their own identity through expressive sloped ceilings over living zones, punctuated by pop-up windows that catch the sun and offer sky views, creating rhythm and variation in the exterior form when glimpsed from the street. Similarly, the paved brick paths cutting across the plot-length driveway provide a deliberate visual marker for each unit.
Mel Bright, founding director of Studio Bright, describes the need to accommodate cars on an already compact site as “an Australian challenge”. The sensitive suburban adaptation and densification tactics explored by Nigel Bertram (including with NMBW Architecture Studio), and the design-based research led by Shane Murray into new dwelling models for retiring baby boomers through The Ageing of Aquarius project, have both been key references. This type of thinking is most evident in the way the mirrored L-shaped plan cleverly transforms two sets of side-by-side drive-up parking bays into flexible, covered verandahs that invite neighbourly encounter while maintaining a subtle threshold—the future wisteria-framed setting for an impromptu chat or grandchild playdate. Rather than group all the parking together and risk overwhelming or severing the relationship to the street, Bright explains that the intention was “to elevate the car space to be a spot for potential community connections”.
Older Women’s Housing Project, 2022. Photography © Rory Gardiner.
This question of community remains central to how we think about life in the suburbs, especially the atomising effect of detached homes, deep setbacks, and zealously fenced boundaries. A new domestic landscape was already being prototyped by Merchant Builders when the villa unit began its creep across Melbourne in the shape of cluster housing developments on the then-metropolitan fringe.⁴ More recent overseas projects like New Ground Cohousing—designed by Pollard Thomas Edwards for an older women’s cohousing group in north London—are going beyond shared outdoor spaces to embed collective facilities that combat social isolation and foster forms of mutual care. With the cohousing model never contemplated for this site, Studio Bright’s design introduces aspects of communality almost by stealth. Often a neglected liminal zone, the front yard is reimagined as a semi-public gathering space, with fragrant citrus trees and a herb garden for each resident, the raised circular planters fashioned from off-the-shelf concrete stock troughs.
The realities of working within a constrained budget mean, as Bright notes, that “one of the main choices … is where to spend the money”. Designing out steel, substituting brick cladding for timber above windows and doors, employing standard construction elements, and minimising custom detailing allowed the architects to invest in features that will reduce the cost of living for residents and maximise the generosity of a tight plan. While still meeting the brief of a repeatable two-bedroom unit that achieves Living Housing Australia Gold standards of accessibility, a zoned interior arrangement incorporating a sliding door to the second bedroom creates an extended living space when the bedroom is not in use. This level of indeterminacy accommodates the prospective need for an in-home carer as residents age in place, but also ensures that the design can adapt to individual patterns of living and the shifting personal circumstances inherent to long-term tenure.
Ultimately, a project like this asks architecture to perform two roles simultaneously—one functional, one symbolic. Beyond the challenge of finessing plot, plan, structure, and form, the WPI Older Women’s Housing Project must also succeed as a physical manifestation and demonstration of an idea. That is, the brief is not limited to this site, or these residents. Implicitly, the design bears some responsibility for seducing the types of funders and communities of influence that have the capacity to ensure the pilot is able to scale. Bright acknowledges that “the big test of this project will be whether [WPI] finds people who want to invest in it as a financial model”. As architects continue to range beyond the perceived limits of the discipline, driven by a desire to engage with the pressing crises of our time in an expanded vision of spatial practice, it is a reminder that the act of designing a “simple, humble project” can still be a potent force for change.
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1. Australian Associated Press, ‘Australian House Prices Rising at Fastest Yearly Pace Since 1989, But Signs Boom is Cooling’, The Guardian (1 September 2021).
2. Danielle Wood et al, Women’s Work: The Impact of the COVID Crisis on Australian Women, Grattan Institute Report No. 2021-01 (March 2021).
3. Peter Tulip quoted in John Kehoe, ‘Why APRA Can’t Fix the Housing Market’, Australian Financial Review (1 October 2021).
4. See Alan Pert, ‘Revisited: Vermont Park (1977)’, Architecture Australia (Jul/Aug 2021) 82–89.