The argument of a built form resulting from social and theoretical positions has long been debated for their effectiveness. Architects can only solve the problem of architecture and built form, not the standing social issue of segregation in a particular community. Therefore, designers are faced with the problem of building a structure that responds to these issues at hand. In Footscray, the social issue was to enhance and protect the arts. Footscray’s arts and cultural activities were seen as a critical feature of the community and providing an ‘artists village’ was a viable option. This incorporates five 84m² shared studios, art displays/exhibition space and a shared community facility, the winter garden ( Figure 1 & 2). The design intent was to incorporate the artist back into the public realm, where their work can be treated as a display in itself, in hope that businesses will employ local artists and creative people by their shop front displays. Therefore, the ‘village’ was developed as a low-density sector, with adequate access for the pedestrian and the bicycle and kept a consistent street interface on Arran Street. Affordable student arts and crafts courses will be part of the ‘artists village’ program to encourage student participation and integrating different age and social groups to come together. These studios will be solely managed and owned by the council to avoid the rising of studio rents.

Another issue in Footscray was to promote a more permanent population and ownerships mixes, while preserving ethnic diversity, socio economic diversity and mixed use. A more permanent population, which means house owners, will instantly increase safety. 

A 4-storey apartment building, with 49 apartment units, 1 café on the ground floor and a green ramp facing the public square is designed to help create this mix to cater for different types of communities (Figure 3). There are 13 units on the ground floor, followed by 12 units on the ascending floors. When broken down to typical apartments, there are 6 types of apartment layouts ( Figure 4). However, all the apartments on a given floor have a different shape, due to the overall shape of the building that responds to the adjacent building on the south side. Also, it is discovered that people tend to respond to public space in a similar way to which they arrange furniture in their own homes. Therefore, with the maximum number of apartments having a different layout to them, it might promote diversity in the public realm. Moreover, the design intention was to incorporate different types of occupancies, namely students and private owners. Approximately 40 percent of the apartment will be allocated for student housing, which include 2 bedroom and 1-bedroom apartments units. This is determined through apartment area calculations. Private ownership apartments will range from 80m² onwards. On the top most floor, the roof line is expressed through the extrusion of different ceiling heights. The living areas will have a floor to ceiling height of 3.5 m and the bedrooms and services, 2.8m. This provides a relief to the building and at the same time, reduces the building bulk significantly to correspond to the small grain nature of the artists’ studio (Figure 5). In addition, the apartment building design was an attempt to introduce authentic spaces without any intention to force people to come together, only suggesting that it can happen. Spaces such as the courtyard garden, light wells and large framing windows are considered to be authentic spaces in the building.

The double loaded corridor space in an apartment building usually performs one specific function, which is circulation. In this apartment, large frames are introduced at the end of these circulation spaces to capture light and frame views (Figure 6). In order to make these views more valuable, the apartment is designed to have bedroom windows that look out onto their own balconies, which leaves most exterior walls not punctured by windows, unless the sole purpose of the wall is to capture sunlight, (eg. light well). The main faces of the building are on Buckley Street and the façade facing the ramp. The materials are treated different in these two facades to give the building a presence in the public realm. Timber slats installed onto concrete precast panels are carried thought the whole height of the building and corten steel balconies spanning half way across them to stain the timber with age. The façade of the building facing the artists’ studio is made to respond to the height of the studios by the usage of different material treatments (Figure 7). The top most floor responds to the idea that it is meant to look like a 3 storey building, and the balconies are used to hide floor slab, to suggest that it is floating or a recent light weight addition to a heritage building. A mixture of glass and corten steel balconies help break continuous horizontal façade of the building vertically. On the ground floor, the individual courtyards provide a secondary access to the individual apartments. In addition, the intention of having apartments on the ground floor was to provide passive surveillance and extending the hours of activity. The garden courtyard looks onto the café at the ground floor. The corridor space curves around the courtyard to provide a break in the building bulk and provide an internal circulation to the underground car park. On the first floor, it provides access to the ramp.

The ramp was incorporated to act like a secondary street edge to the apartment building. The ramp attempts to tie together vertical and horizontal elements of the apartment building and create an open green space that services the public space. The concept to have a ramp partially informing the public space was to activate it during the night. It responds to a LED screen in front of adjacent cafe for movie watching activities. This idea is a response to the lack of quality entertainment and gathering spaces in Footscray. The ramp acts as an informal meeting and hanging out space. It can also double up as an outdoor exhibition space for local artists (Figure 9). The slope has a measured ratio of 1:15,which is suitable to sit and walk on. The stair was introduced to promote street activities such as skateboarding. The material used on the ramp is of high quality synthetic grass, which responds to the lack of green spaces in Footscray. The ramp is considered to be green space as it satisfies the perception of a green space.

In summary, there is no recipe for creating a diverse mix, it can only be built with having these theories in mind, but the actual implementation of these theories are dependent upon the users and occupants of it.