Muchun (Wanda) Yang

Within and Together

Within Brunswick, adjacent to Dunstan Reserve, the site boundary and the existing garden sit together, assembling a continuation of the good lives already residing in the suburb.
Within the site, four individual homogeneous building blocks follow a modular rhythm, slightly offset and rotated from the boundary, maximising opportunities for true north orientation. Together, they enclose the interior of the block - a courtyard, or just a huge open-air garden in between the paths connecting each building block.

Within each building block, floor levels are raised, freeing up an unenclosed and transparent ground floor. The new floor meets with the natural ground and negotiates with the garden. Together, they lay the programmatic foundation of the building, utilised, occupied and inhabited.

Within each level, a set of units offer affordance for the community’s diverse demographics. Despite differing sizes and typologies, a balcony and a core wall system is present across all units. Together, domestic functionality is softly dissolved into the rigorous consistency of units in social housing. Together, they lay the programmatic foundation of the building, utilised, occupied and inhabited.

Within each unit,  minimal concerns for both interior and exterior representations or decorative aesthetics establish each unit into a home, leaving the blank for the residents to fill in possibilities of inhibition and domestication. Exposed concrete beams, columns and services. Together, they are not a celebration of architectural tectonics, but more like a statement of ordinariness in domestic life.

Not only within, but together.