Li Ann Lim

Investment House is a housing model aimed to help families, young professionals, empty nesters and single parents secure a property through income generation opportunities and cost saving strategies. It incorporates a program mix that includes an informal childcare centre that helps families with young children secure dual income and allows single parents to keep working while raising children. Investment House also houses co-working spaces that enables young professionals and parents to work remotely and incubator spaces where business ideas can be launched, providing job and business opportunities for fellow residents. Through a series of architectural moves, residents are able to rent out spaces to house these various programs, providing amenities not just to fellow residents but to the greater neighbourhood. This housing model looked to the precedent of the monastery, one of the oldest forms of co-living in a building that houses several programs, and translated 3 key architectural features into strategies for this new housing typology.

The way in which monastic quadrangles or cloisters served to enhance the approach to a sacred space or as a common area for monks to read and write was applied to the cloisters at Investment House, giving residents a sense of arrival when coming home whilst facilitating encounters amongst residents. The modularity of the monastic cell led to the concept where spaces like the living and dining rooms that are underutilized as people work, can be opened up in the day to form rentable communal spaces, like the childcare and co-working areas and closed off to form private living and dining rooms at night. The monastic courtyards and the frugal use of space to house multiple programs that benefit the monks and the wider community was applied to the design of the yards in Investment House, providing residents and the greater neighbourhood access to shared amenities. Investment House proposes a new way of looking at the Australian backyard by merging these areas to form spaces that can be shared between residents and the neighbourhood. When replicated across the suburbs, these areas could form a network of community yards.