Building Urban Villages - SMALL FOOTPRINT - Ep 3

Across the world, the design of our city homes has been increasingly shaped by an investor first market. Melbourne is facing some of the highest housing prices in the world and local developers Nightingale Housing & Hip V Hype are creating alternative models for home building that are more sustainable and livable.. In the rapidly changing suburb of Brunswick, Hip V Hype has reworked the site of a 140sqm home to accommodate three homes the same size with shared spaces and exposure to the street. Nightingale is building a new ‘village’ purposefully designed to accommodate families alongside singles and couples in sustainable small footprint apartments. These projects represent a change to home building in Australia and worldwide, where affordability and sustainability are quickly becoming the focus, and developers are expected to build communities rather than just homes.

Our regular Never Too Small episodes will continue releasing fortnightly. This is a different kind of series from us, but we’re excited to know what you think. Please leave us feedback and comments on the video.

0:00 - Intro with Colin
1:02 - High Rise Development in Cities with Rob Adams
3:40 - Davison Collaborative Small Footprint Homes with Hip V Hype
7:50 - Nightingale Housings vision for apartment building
10:20 - Challenges of dealing with local government and regulation
12:38 - Outro with Colin

Supported by Screen Australia & Youtube through the Skip Ahead Initiative

Produced by New Mac Video Agency
Director: Colin Chee
Producer: Luke Clark
Cinematographer: Simon Davies
Editor: Jessica Ruasol

Music:
Youth by ANBR
Are You Real by Jimmy Svensson
Over Oceans by We Dream of Eden
Amber by Elad Perez
Ficus by Tomas Novoa
Thread the Needle by Sun Wash
Clockwork by Hans Johnson

[nevertoosmall]

There are three more Small Footprint episodes to come, episode four will be out on the 25th of November. We’ll be taking a look at how small footprint housing can be created at a lower cost, and where the opportunities lie for cities to create more affordable homes.

Meanwhile our regular Never Too Small episodes will continue releasing fortnightly. This is a different kind of series from us, but we’re excited to know what you think. Please leave us feedback and comments on the video.

New episodes every Monday.

If you’re an architect or designer with a project we could feature, please share it with us at

Featured Architects/Designers:
@nightingale.housing
@hipvhype

Check out our merch - www.nts.store
Workspace by Never Too Small - www.nts.space

[ewanc]

Would love to see more on the governance of planning and development and how to take it on. Your channel has some amazing outcomes of redeveloping older small spaces to make them work more efficiently however they all have been done by people engaged in planning and construction. How does the average joe economically achieve the same outcome?

[waveman]

This video just barely scratches the surface!
I hope that it will serve as a trailer for a feature-length version soon.

Australia really needs to update our housing regulations urgently.
Double glazing should be mandatory in new buildings, as well as a good insulation rating.
So many new apartments and townhouses are built for investors, they are not nice or comfortable to live in.

[kaisquared]

Another great episode. I hope we can start to see change towards human- and eco-friendly cities. Thanks for your efforts NTS Team!

[emstewart]

I pass Southbank frequently and my heart sinks each time. The former school is the only pleasing building. Thanks for sharing examples of poor outcomes and carefully thought out outcomes. Oh and the cruise ship analogy is a good one

[AKAThatKid]

Brilliant! Thanks so much for doing this in Melbourne. As a uni student who is trying to wrap my head around urban planning and adjacent studies I'm lucky to have great content like this :)

[Tupunaforever]

Great video, thankyou...this video sung to me in regard to my building project here in New Zealand. Our Resource Management Act is the country's building code. It loves developments that are vanilla, simple. If you want to be creative and work outside the box, it's possible but difficult. We purchased two and a half acres that nobody wanted because it had a stream, the land sits in the middle of town. Our development is a Maori Village within an echo system, a Papakainga. We planted over 7000 native trees and plants a wetland and have the capacity on the site for 4 communal homes. It hasn't been easy, and the hurdles have been immense. Love your videos and concepts, nice to know there are others also who challenge the status quo...

[YT-GuestAccount]

Just reposting:
@NEVER TOO SMALL
Could you, please, make an extra episode about small apartments and noise (e. g. how to improve sound absorption, which space-saving measurements help to add some soundproofing)?
I also would like to know how people cope with living in crowded locations when there are whole families sharing the same ground-plan size above or beneath and there is no extra space/room to avoid the noise of your neighbors.
I see so many quite minimalist examples on here but the echo and sound absorption must be insanely bad in some of them.
Edit: (How) Do archtitects and designers take this into account; are they aware of its importance for [portions of] a world where silence has become a luxury and noise potentially is making people sick?

[drumgoldie]

Love the innovation potential of small apartments and tiny houses. This leaves more space for nature to abound and flourish. The bigger and more wasteful homes and cleared land are stealing much needed habitat for plants, animals, insects and human interaction out of doors. Living in smaller spaces which are comfortable and sustainable is everything we need in the way of housing.

[auratovar]

Every corner is well used. Small, but full of style and good ideas.

[catricetkadlec]

Cities around the world need to implement this concept. Beautiful!

[raynoladominguez]

Great video. We have to be very intentional and thoughtful in the way that we plan out and provide for the future, not just for an exclusive set of individuals but for a wider populace and those to come in the future. Bravo.

[stevenkeller]

Really like the new programing. It's funny to me how much Australia and the US are alike. As a three term planning commissioner, hearing about different and unique solutions is very important to me. Thank you.

[alioop]

Thanks Hip v Hype, Nightingale and Assemble for taking on these issues and coming up with ideas and solutions. Thanks NTS. This conversation is so interesting. 👏👏👏

[bronteflorian]

I would love to see a video that addresses personal financing and mortgages for small living. My partner and I are desperate to find a perfect studio to renovate for small living, but acquiring a 20-40% deposit as required by the bank is a far away dream. Meanwhile they’ll lend me 95% of a multimillion dollar home. There’s no incentive to buy small when it’s actually CHEAPER (in the short term) for me to buy big!

[shortwdBE]

Really like these longer videos. Great series.

[sara.]

Always a pleasure to watch the videos of this serie on this channel.

[MsLouisez]

To what the gent said towards the end of the video; I agree, the 'community' often fights against multi residential housing in Victoria for numerous reasons.

While I understand the community wanting to keep what they have (single family homes, backyards, 1-2 million dollar land titles).
I don't understand where they expect the residents who do not have 1.5 million dollars to go? To a place less livable?
These suburbs are not (or should I say 'were not') afualant, they were middle class and lower class suburbs before the housing boom.

Further, income and education differences between the single dwelling home owners and apartment dwellers can be negligible, yet Australians will often pass negative comments on who an apartment complex will attract.

I'm ashamed to say Australia is becoming segregated. Not just in wealthy suburbs - but collectively.

I do believe well designed apartments, multiuse, and walkable communities are the answer.
We have a long way to go to stop the cookie cutter shoeboxes and change the cultural identity of apartment living in Australian minds.
Great video.

[jamesmcpherson]

Rob Adam’s is clearly a Pattern Language fan. Such intimate places in this video. Bravo

[teahhammet]

Amazing! So interesting to hear about the planning process from this angle; one that I don’t think is addressed enough! Bring on incentives for sustainable, high quality development with an emphasis on integrated communities 🙏🏽🙏🏽