Good apartment design starts with the plan
When people think about apartment buildings, they usually notice the architecture first. The façade or the materials, or how the building meets the street. But the thing that has the biggest impact on everyday life is often invisible from the outside – the floor plan.
The shape of a building determines how much sunlight reaches each apartment, whether fresh air can move through the home, and how much usable space people actually have. It influences whether you can throw open windows on opposite sides of the apartment on a warm afternoon, if shared spaces feel welcoming, and whether or not neighbours bump into each other often enough to become familiar faces.
As Australian cities continue to grow, these fundamentals matter more than ever. Good apartment design isn’t just about fitting more homes onto a site. It’s about creating homes people genuinely enjoy living in, year after year.
The problem with the double-loaded corridor
The most common apartment layout is the double-loaded corridor.
It’s defined by a lift and stair core positioned in the middle of the building, with a long hallway stretching out in both directions and apartments lining either side.
Developers like the model because it’s efficient. More apartments fit within the building envelope and less floor area is given over to circulation.
The problem is that many apartments end up with windows on only one side, which means less natural ventilation and fewer opportunities for daylight to reach deeper into the home. The corridors themselves usually need artificial lighting and mechanical ventilation. And while residents pass through these spaces every day, they’re rarely places anyone wants to spend time in.
For some sites, it’s the right solution, but it’s far from the only way to plan apartments.
Designing for light, air and community
At Fieldwork, we often come back to a few apartment models that prioritise natural light, fresh air and shared life.
They’re all slightly different, but they start from the same idea: the spaces between apartments matter too.
Rather than treating circulation as leftover space, these buildings use it as an opportunity. Walkways become places for planting, bike storage, a quick chat with a neighbour or simply a more pleasant journey home.
These small moments might sound insignificant, but they’re often what makes a building feel like a community rather than a collection of front doors.
Here are a few different planning types we’ve been exploring.
The breezeway apartment
The breezeway apartment replaces the enclosed internal corridor with an open-air walkway running along one side of the building. It’s a relatively simple move, but it changes the experience of the building dramatically.
Fresh air can move naturally through the circulation spaces, reducing the reliance on mechanical systems. Apartments are often able to open up on two sides, creating cross ventilation and helping homes stay comfortable throughout the year.
Just as importantly, residents arrive home through an outdoor space rather than a sealed hallway.
In warmer climates especially, breezeway buildings can feel more connected to their surroundings, blurring the line between inside and outside.
We’ve applied the breezeway at Gibson Street, Bowden and at 38 Albermarle Street, Kensington.
The doughnut block (or the central courtyard)
The doughnut block looks fairly ordinary from the street because all the impact is focused in the middle.
Apartments wrap around a shared central courtyard that brings daylight, greenery and fresh air into the heart of the building – a common approach in for centuries in dense European cities. Instead of every apartment relying solely on the street frontage, the courtyard creates another source of outlook and amenity.
These spaces often become the social centre of the building. A garden, somewhere for children to play, a place to sit with a coffee, or simply a patch of green visible from your kitchen window.
In denser urban areas, this shared space can make a surprisingly big difference to everyday life.
We used a doughnut shape plan at 121 Lygon Street, Brunswick East.
The U-shaped building
The U-shaped apartment building creates a large courtyard by wrapping homes around three sides of a site. The opening allows sunlight to reach further into the building and gives more apartments a view towards a central, open space.
Like the doughnut block, the courtyard acts as a communal outdoor room. It’s somewhere people can gather, relax and spend time without leaving the building.
For larger sites, it can be an effective way to balance higher density with a generous sense of space.
We’ve applied a U-shape plan at 2 St Georges Road, Fitzroy North.
The single-loaded apartment
Some of the most liveable apartment buildings emerge from the most awkward sites.
Single-loaded buildings place apartments on just one side of a circulation path, leaving the other side open for light, air or views. Because homes only occupy one side of the plan, the building itself can stay relatively narrow.
The slim profile is particularly useful on constrained or unconventional sites, but it also creates better living conditions. Daylight and natural ventilation can come into the apartment from both sides, often making rooms feel more generous than their footprint suggests.
It’s a simple idea, but often a very effective one. And one that we’ve designed at our Neerim Road, Murrumbeena project.
Looking beyond efficiency
The difference between a good apartment and a bad apartment layout can shape someone’s daily experience. Access to sunlight, fresh air, outdoor space and a sense of community affect how comfortable, healthy and enjoyable a home feels over time.
Apartment buildings are like their own small neighbourhoods. That’s why the spaces between apartments matter as much as the apartments themselves. The challenge isn’t simply fitting more homes onto a site, but finding ways to make apartment living something people actively choose, rather than settle for.
