The book details how Grounds was introduced to compact apartment planning in London; tested these ideas on his holiday shack at Mount Eliza, on the Mornington Peninsula; and then developed a design repertoire for everything from floor plans to furnishings.
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Five Good Swiss Plans

Roy Grounds: Experiments in Minimum Living

Therefore: D House

(hi!)

Thank you! I think the best outcome would be that these patterns can be built more efficiently than traditional volume housing, and there’s a big positive response to simple architecturally-designed houses. If those things come together we might influence the big volume housing providers too!

Imagine if the housing target was set not at 1.2 million dwellings, but 1.2 million single-occupant dwellings, with the generosity and amenity of Grounds’ designs?
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Your other concern is valid! We’ve tried to make our pattern economical and replicable, and MMC companies are currently working to deliver it quickly and cheaply. But financing and land costs still constrain affordability. My hope is that these designs will offer an alternative to volume housing.

Regarding the first concern, I don’t believe it’s devaluing architecture when much of the target market would not have engaged an architect under other circumstances, and when there is much architectural work to be done to adjust and implement these templates to suit sites and occupants.

Agreed. That’s why our pattern stipulates carports but not garages, with doors optional provided they achieve 50% transparency, and encourages occupation of street-facing front buildings as habitable rooms and workshops rather than parking spaces.

All terraces have been designed to minimum LHA silver level accessibility and can achieve gold when desired. This means that all ground floor spaces can be level, and that single-run stairs can be fitted with a chair lift. Rear or front pavilions can also function as self-contained ‘granny’ flats.

Thank you Philip! Exciting to be realising a demonstration project with Landcom at present, and some other projects starting up for multigenerational families and small scale builders, developers and investors.

Many of Grounds’ apartments were equipped with shared lockers and laundries, built-in furniture and fittings, loose furniture and curtains, and even custom bedding, crockery and utensils.
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David Neustein on Belgian design firm Stand Van Zaken, which “designs temporary installations that take on the appearance of permanent objects (such as street lamps and exhaust vents), and makes permanent structures look as if they were instantaneous.”

Pacemakers!