With the move toward mixed-use residential zoning and medium to higher density housing, your NOTES team have been researching resources to help Architects and Designers plan a response to the new challenges. The New South Wales Apartment Design Guide is just such a resource. It was published in 2015 to help improve the planning and design of residential apartment development in NSW. The goal was to help achieve better design and planning for residential apartment development by providing benchmarks for designing and assessing these developments.
The guide is designed to:
- deliver better quality design for buildings that responds to the character of the area, landscape setting and surrounding built form
- improve liveability through enhanced internal and external apartment amenity, including better layout, apartment depth and ceiling heights, solar access, natural ventilation and visual privacy
- deliver improved sustainability through better traffic and transport solutions, greater building adaptability and robustness, improved energy efficiency and water sensitive urban design
- improve the relationship of apartments to the public domain including streets, lanes and parks
- deliver design guidance and assist in the provision of a more diverse housing mix and choice
- support councils in developing planning controls and master plans through improved guidance.
The Guide has responded to challenges, advances and innovations across a range of social, economic, environmental and sustainable development fields as well as aesthetic and technical changes and opportunities.
For examples of how some of these principle are being applied you can also visit their Priority Growth Areas and Precincts webpages.