The Brief
State Design Book: Part 2 – Community Choice is a guide that follows on from Part 1, the Great Design Fast Track. Where Part 1 defines what good design for medium-density housing looks like, Part 2 identifies built projects that capture these same principles, selected by the community and reviewed by a panel of experts.
Over April and June 2025, the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) invited Victorians to nominate up to three buildings – townhouses and apartments between two and eight storeys – they consider examples of great design, resulting in a total of 129 projects. A panel from the Office of the Victorian Government Architect’s Independent Design Review Experts shortlisted 28 against the seven principles from the Great Design Fast Track.
Our brief was to identify the design conditions that make these projects successful, and to communicate them through diagrams and drawings.
Our Response
We produced a series of hand-drawn illustrations – site diagrams, sections and massing studies that draw out what each of the exemplar projects does well. Each illustration isolates the noteworthy design detail, for instance, how consolidating car parking frees up shared landscape, the way a split section resolves a sloping site, or how external circulation doubles as social space. The intent throughout is to illustrate how the design principles have been executed on both historic and recent projects.
Impact
The Community Choice State Design Book outlines 28 built projects as precedents for good medium-density housing, spanning more than half a century – from mid-century apartments to recent build-to-rent. Because the projects were nominated by the community and shortlisted by an expert panel, the guide reads as a shared account of good design rather than a top-down approach.
With the older projects holding up as well as, or better than, much newer work, the lasting impact of good design is communicated through a succinct and valuable package of reference projects.
State Design Book: Part 2 – Community Choice
The Brief
State Design Book: Part 2 – Community Choice is a guide that follows on from Part 1, the Great Design Fast Track. Where Part 1 defines what good design for medium-density housing looks like, Part 2 identifies built projects that capture these same principles, selected by the community and reviewed by a panel of experts.
Over April and June 2025, the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) invited Victorians to nominate up to three buildings – townhouses and apartments between two and eight storeys – they consider examples of great design, resulting in a total of 129 projects. A panel from the Office of the Victorian Government Architect’s Independent Design Review Experts shortlisted 28 against the seven principles from the Great Design Fast Track.
Our brief was to identify the design conditions that make these projects successful, and to communicate them through diagrams and drawings.
Our response
We produced a series of hand-drawn illustrations – site diagrams, sections and massing studies that draw out what each of the exemplar projects does well. Each illustration isolates the noteworthy design detail, for instance, how consolidating car parking frees up shared landscape, the way a split section resolves a sloping site, or how external circulation doubles as social space. The intent throughout is to illustrate how the design principles have been executed on both historic and recent projects.
Link: State Design Book (planning.vic.gov.au)
Published
12.08.26